XCOM: Enemy Below
by DeviantWriter2015
Summary: A tachyon pulse reaches the facility. One by one, machines half-dormant in the earth awaken. Cryogenic pods pop open with a terrible,festering sound. A webbed hand reaches out ungainly. The Second Alien War has begun.
1. Pt 1: Ch 1--New Year

XCOM: Enemy Below

Authors Note. I played Enemy Unknown first. Then UFO Defense. Then Terror From the Deep. They were all excellent games, but if there was one I would mod the shit out of, it would be TFTD.

I've made a few changes to the story.

The first and most important is that the aliens don't have psychic attacks and don't have the Molecular Control Network because that name sounds stupid. Instead they have "Mechanical Control," that allows them to manipulate the machinery of their subs and their weapons.

Yes, I made the new aliens into technopaths.

Another is that the aquanauts can "fly" in the water without Magnetic Ion Armor. It's an advanced technique called swimming. They have flippers for their uniforms and everything.

I loved the sonic pistol and blasta rifle over the cannon, and used both for much of the game. I loved using the techies to craft more ammo.

I loved the shit out of the golden ion armor. Nothing like taking a blast from a sonic canon to the front, only to take ZERO damage!

I was lucky that an alien base was spawned next to my own base in the Atlantic. The damn thing supply cruiser for it was fully of shitty gillmen. By the end of my playthrough I was making over 30 million. =D

Enough about me. Let's do this shit.

Part One—Learning

**_"It's a get wise world, big fella. Get wise or die."_**

**_—The Stand_**

_**He reached out and grabbed the edge of the ship, much as Anderson had that first day. He was aware-too aware-that an expression of naked eagerness had spread over Bobbi's face. It was the face of someone who is waiting for a firecracker to go off.**_

_**-The Tommyknockers**_

ONE

When the cruise ship just off the coast of Barbados was split in half by an explosion, people thought at first that it was human terrorism. That one Islamic terrorist group or another would claim responsibility for the attack. That an eco-terrorist group would. That videos would surface on the internet about how some lonely kid had blown up the ship to get back at all women for not having sex with him.

That was the hope anyway. The hope of every government in the world. That it would be a awful reason, but a human reason.

Then the Navy of New Mexico went in and the horrible truth was revealed. In all there were less than 30 survivors. Mostly children, thank God for small favors and all that. They all reported the same thing. Some "monster " had come out from the ocean. It had fired something that had been bright green and glowing. After the attack, the monster had risen out of the ocean, and flew in the direction of Barbados. People feared the worst: a bombing run or a terrorist raid. But the ship had just flown over it, and flew to the Pacific.

The Second Alien War had begun.

Forty years ago, XCOM forces assaulted the Ethereal base on the red planet Mars. On the surface, they lost two people. The first was Captain Sumie. A damned good soldier but no match for the psychic attacks of Sectoid Commanders on the surface. She fell in battle, as did two others weak in psi strength. It couldn't be helped. The survivors went down into the base and shit if they didn't get lucky. From the command center with the alien brain, two elevator shafts went down to a long hallway. It traveled west. Down the end of that hallway was a juncture. To the left, was the southern end of the alien HQ. To the right was another hallway. Take the first left in this hallway and you have the elevator shaft room where the troops ended up.

I'm not kidding. The alien brain was literally right next to them. Killing it was easier than expected. It tried bargaining but nobody was willing to listen—least of all Otto Zander, the legend.

Not after the countless abductions with captives being cut into while still alive. Not after all the commercial airlines shot down. Not after we realized Alien Food had human parts in it.

Not after the Terror Sites, the product of human resistance to the kidnappings.

Not after the Kiryu-Kai disaster…

We would learn later that the alien HQ on Mars had sent a signal. Deep into the ocean.

Eight-thousand people. That's how many had been on the Oasis of the Seas prior to it being split in half. Around 60 percent of them were either women or children. Some of them very young. Babies really.

The alarm started blaring.

Captain Joe Vargas was snapped out of his thoughts. He quite young for the most senior rank in the XCOM forces. Then again, there was no XCOM. Not even semi-official, which had been the case 40 years ago. He had a thin beard but a thick mustache and a black beret rather than a white naval cap.

In front of him, a network of widescreens. One contained info on the funding of the nations. On another, USO activity in the main oceans was displayed by a line graph. The third was the Geoscape, a massive 3D map of planet Earth, the third rock from the Sun. The fourth were incoming resources: soldiers, scientists and technicians as well as any supplies. Any transfers to different bases (right now there was just this one) would also show up, with the "From" base, the "To" base and the time of arrival.

Right now only the third monitor was of any importance. A red blip showed up on the radar, about 500 km from the base.

"Captain this is Sacred."

That was the base's head sonar officer.

"Go ahead Sacred."

"We picked up a contact. Right here in the Atlantic Ocean with us."

"I see it. What's the size?"

"Small captain, but remember the medium and large scouts—"

"Yes I know. Is this one like that?"

"Looks like a very small one sir. We've had several of these pop open in our waters already."

"Has Angler One already been dispatched?"

"The pilot's going through systems check in the pen as we speak."

The submersible pilot's name was Jordan Year. He had a thin build, green eyes, and short blonde hair that was said to look like Agent Washington's. He had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

His friends, being he hilarious assholes that they were, had already named him "New Year" before his first practice run with the Angler. That was fine. His friend Daphne Six had been nicknamed "Rainbow" shortly after arriving here. It pissed her off to no end, and honestly tickled the ever-loving fuck out of New Year.

The two of them were in the living quarters, and trying to catch some shut eye. They'd been drilling maneuvers all damned day in the simulation room. He was ragged, whether he wanted to admit it or not. He had curled up in his bed when the alarm went off. New Year groaned.

The alarm watch was beeping. The voice of a calm, collected women could be heard. "Year report to the sub pen. I repeat. Year report to…"

"Son of a donkey's dildo." New Year muttered.

"I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that."

"Knock yourself out." New Year muttered. He expected a crack at his expense. When that didn't happen, he started putting his uniform on.

A flying submarine was hardly different from a plane when the former was in the air and the new Angler ships—heavily modified versions of the British Barracuda—were the fastest that the planet had to offer. There were plenty of Barracudas still, just not with XCOM. The Euro-Syndicate, where Year had been born had plenty of the things swimming around, in part to keep the Egyptian Cartel from fucking over its truce.

None of that mattered anymore. It was January 12, 2040. It was a new era. A new and terrible battle.

What mattered was the alarm. New Year ran out of the living quarters. The sub pens were north of the air lock. The northwest pen had the Triton that had just come in, a combo of American and Japanese tech. The central pen had Rainbow's Angler and the one in the eastern pen belonged to New Year.

As he walked over to it, he could make out the technicians examining the Ajax Torpedo Launchers that had just been installed. One of the techies saw Year and waved to him.

"We made it just in time bud! Once these damned things arrived we started installing them to the sub's hardpoints. Had we waited even one hour, you'd be sitting this one out."

"But I'm not, so good on you Yamata"

Carl Yamata gave him a thumbs-up, and cleared his subordinates from the area as Year climbed the rather steep ramp to his ship.

New Year went through systems check in the cockpit. Fuel. Sonar. Controls. Comms.

"All green Sacred."

To the left of the pen, all the way in the corner, was a small office where a petite French lady was sitting in front of a bulky computer with an equally bulky microphone in front of her. Below New Year's Angler, a door to open water was opening.

"Roger that, New Year. You have the green light." Sacred said. "I repeat you have the sea."

"Copy that Sacred." New Year said. "My sea."

The sub descended into the hole of the pen. It gave way to the open waters of the Atlantic.

He turned the sub to the west and headed out.

It took him around twenty-five minutes to finally reach the bandit. It was morning over the Atlantic, and the depth they were at was fairly shallow. Light poked through the surface and New Year thought that the ocean had never looked so pretty.

"Sacred, I've got the enemy in my sights." New Year said. A lens at the front of the Angler opened. Miles away, a separate video window would appear on Sacred's computer. He zoomed in on the sub. It was quite tiny, with what appeared to be two small windows on the backside. They were round and black and made the thing look like it was staring at him.

"You are clear to engage Angler Two."

_Alright let's do this. _

New Year went for a standard attack. He didn't want the bandit to get away but didn't fancy having his remains splattered across an Angler that just got ripped in half. He had suitable armaments. The Ajax torpedoes had equivalent range to the Stingrays from the first alien war. The alien scouts from that war had shitty range, and hoped these small subs would follow a similar trend. He had his craft gas cannon as a backup, although it _also _had shitty range.

A square cursor hovered over the alien sub. It froze over it and turned red.

"Target locked."

New Year pulled the trigger. There was an immense rushing sound as the project raced through the dark waters of the Atlantic.

The Ajax torpedoes were about as accurate as the Stingrays from 40 years ago, which meant they could miss just as easily as they could hit, even if the target was large.

"Come on baby." New Year whispered. "Do it for daddy."

There was a flash of light: an explosion.

_Yes! A HIT!_

He waited to see if the alien sub was still operational. His heart froze when he saw that it was.

New Year didn't waste any more time. He sent in another one. This one missed. As did the third one. The alien sub broke left. Hard. It went out of the Angler's view.

"Goddamn it!"

New Year hit the brakes, and turned the Angler to the left. The alien sub had gone well out of engagement range. The bastard was fast. Too fast. It took him another six minutes to get in range again.

_What's the damn thing even looking for?_

He tried not to think of what would happen if it was looking for a ship to sink. If it was a scout, it might not have the weapons for it, but New Year didn't want to risk it.

Suddenly, he found himself accelerating the Angler, maxing out the thrusters.

His parents had been on a cruise in the Caribbeans for their anniversary. They'd gone to San Juan and then to San Martin where their ship, the Jewel of the Seas was currently. They were currently waiting for the heads of Royal Carribean to get back of them, either with news that the cruise would proceed (they were already behind schedule) or news that it would be canceled. .

It could've just as easily been them.

The Angler was in gas cannon range now. He was certain the alien craft was a small scout. The techies would think up a fancy name for it, but it was a small scout. His granddad said that there was never too much trouble shooting the things down. The difficult part was getting in range.

He sent out two more torpedoes and then opened up with the gun. The cannon wasn't strong, but it had three-hundred rounds on the Angler, an upgrade from the Barracuda. As New Year watched, the ammo counter started going down.

The first Ajax hit. There was an explosion: this one was much larger. The shockwave rattled the Angler, but it was fine. He kept the Angler going forward, waiting for the alien sub to dart out of the explosion.

It did not. He waited. And it wasn't showing up on the craft's sonar any more. He'd done it. He had won.

New Year realized he'd been holding his breath. Suddenly the ocean was so quiet. He couldn't even hear the sound of the engine.

He realized he hadn't been blinking. He blinked and immediately his eyes started to burn as if pokers had been shoved into them. It was an annoying habit that he'd never gotten rid of. Lucky it only happened in situations like this. Eye-damaged pilots were not pilots at all, and he'd been born to do this shit.

"Sacred, this is Angler Two."

"Go ahead New Year."

"The bandit is down. I repeat hostile eliminated. The sub is not intact. I repeat, the sub is completely destroyed. No surviving aliens."

He engaged the Angler's auto-pilot. His job was done. He was heading back. The techies wouldn't be able to salvage anything from the ship. That was fine. It went without saying that there would be more.

A lot more.


	2. Pt 1: Ch 2--Claude

TWO

January 15

The Triton sailed in the Mediterranean, just off the coast of Italy. If there was one thing the pilot liked, it was the beeping of its sonar. It was melodious. Rhythmic. If she was on a bed, the sonar probably would've put her to sleep. It drove the seaman, crazy but fuck those idiots. If this war was anything like the second, none of them would make it two months. She was glad to be a pilot. When it came down to wars, good pilots lived 90 percent of the time if not more. With soldiers and marines, it was much less so.

"Sacred, this is Triton-One."

"Copy One. Go ahead."

"I've got eyes on the alien sub. You are gonna think I'm crazy but…"

"But what…?"

"The alien submarine looks like a giant lobster."

"A lobster."

Triton one peered into the zoomed in camera. "Well sorta….if its pincers were fused together."

Long silence from Sacred. Probably trying to gauge how drunk the pilot was. That was fine as paint. She'd only had four or five shots of the Fireball Whiskey that was nestled between her legs right now. That would only barely make you swerve on a deserted highway.

"Copy that Triton One." Was all Sacred said. "You have the go ahead for landing."

"Roger that." The Triton One's pilot smiled. As the Triton descended to the seabed of the Mediterranean, the pilot expected the alien sub to suddenly take off again. That's what had happened yesterday. Claude called the aliens the biggest bunch of cockblockers this side of the Milky Way. That was almost funny then.

The pilot flicked the green switch on her left. A light just went green in the Divers's cabin like one half of Christmas was here. Ensign Laura Dreyfus would flick the switch next to it, and the cabin would be flooded.

The light went off, and the pilot sighed. _Good luck guys, _ she thought and looked through the cockpit. The alien sub was in front of them by about 60 meters. It'd shown up on the sonar as a small UFO. It was small in that it only seemed to be one story tall, but that was it. Maybe it was supposed to be like the cross-shaped Large Scouts from the first alien war. But damn if it didn't look long.

_You're gonna need it._

When the Diver's cabin started to flood, Seaman Claude Dreyfus tried to ignore some of the fear that crept up into his throat. It was natural to be afraid, but he hated it just the same.

"Hey guys don't worry!" he cried. He flashed all his colleagues an arrogant smile. "Whatever these cocksuckers got for us, I'm sure we can handle it."

That was rich. It sounded fake even before it left his stupid mouth. The other Divers regarded him with blank expressions. Damn, couldn't they at least _try _to smile? His sister, Laura, was next to him. She was looking at him like he lost his marbles.

"Shut the fuck up you hound." Laura said shortly. She was an angry human being, with short brown hair and small brown eyes.

Her crack got a fair amount of laughs from the other Divers, especially Paul Harrison. Laura herself wasn't laughing. She was staring at Claude like she'd gone down ass-first on a thumbtack.

The door on the portside of the Triton opened. Laura poked her head out. Nothing blasted it off so that was good. They'd landed down in a coral reef area. The area in front of them was clear and clean for about ten feet before the coral spread all over the place.

There were no hostiles in the immediate area. Laura was a vet of the Syndicate War and already knew shit like that could change quickly.

The squad fanned out. There were fourteen of them and they would spread out in three groups of three and one group of four. The first squad, A Squad, would head south, in the direction of the enemy sub. B Squad would go east, directly into the Coral Reef. C's squad would be covering for B Squad.

He, thankfully, was in C Squad. That was damned fine with him. Better than fine even. It meant he would be going around the northern flank of the reef rather than going right through the middle. It meant there wouldn't be as much cover. He'd see the aliens just as soon as they saw him.

B Squad went out first. Sanchez, Pierre, Jackson and Anderson swam out one at a time.

"Clear on my side." Sanchez said. He was short but had a fiery temper it make up for it. He aimed his jet harpoon rifle towards front of the craft.

"Clear on this end." reported Jackson. He aimed his gas cannon toward the front of the craft. It was said to be heavy, but Jackson was having few problems maneuvering it through the water. He had a strength rating of over thirty to credit for that, with a red high explosive clip in the weapon rather than a green clip of armor piercing rounds.

Sanchez signaled to Jackson, who nodded and started to follow him. Claude watched as the two of them went to the front of the Triton, out of sight. He braced himself for the sound of energy fire and the scream of his own teammates.

When that didn't happen, he looked at his squad mates with trembling brown eyes.

"You scared Dreyfus?" Seaman Olsen asked. She had a wide, brutal smile. She was armed with the only torpedo launcher XCOM had been given. It was loaded with a small torpedo and Olsen had the two other small torpedoes loaded across her back. No large torpedoes, because they weren't that much stronger than the small ones, and the phosphorous torpedoes sat on the far corner of the Triton.

"Enough Tanya." said their squad leader. Her name was Rachel Henderson. Like Jackson, she had a high strength rating, and had been given a gas cannon. Again with high explosive rounds.

Claude didn't say anything for once. He rechecked his Jet Harpoon one more time. His strength rating was quite low at 20 units. It was pathetic, but at least he'd been given something other than the dart pistol. He had a jet harpoon. It had ten shots before you needed to reload and was about as strong as lethal as onion breath if Diver complaints could be believed.

Most of the extra ammunition sat on the cabin floor.

He came out of the sub. He didn't die. None of his mates reported a contact. That was good. His USO was landed but maybe the aliens had run out of fuel or something like that. Maybe they had all decided to kill themselves.

_Yeah and maybe Jesus Christ came down from heaven to zap them with Kamehameha Waves. Get your head in the game you friggin idiot._

"Contact!" someone shrieked. That was one of the A squad, swimming over towards the USO.

Claude should've ignored that—it wouldn't be his shot either way—but he turned his head. It was a small green…Sectoid. It looked the part, save for the fin on its head and its flippers. It was floating about ten feet over the seabed. It was around twenty feet away from Sanchez, and was holding something bluish-green. It's red eyes narrowed as it observed the marines. It raised the weapon. It was one-handed. Lines like tattoos suddenly shined on the creature's body, and the markings were blood-red.

"Incoming!" Sanchez screamed. That's all he was able to do. A green bright ray shot out of the gun, which made a weird, thick chirping sound—like a bird had been struck with a rock. It cut through the water like the shit wasn't even there, hitting Robert Sanchez directly in the head. It came apart like a grenade had been planted in his mouth. He did a backflip through the water, sailing towards Rachel Henderson. She reached out with a delicate hand and grabbed the body by the leg.

"Shit!" Laura screamed, and aimed her own weapon, another gas cannon. There was an immense rushing sound as the grenade bolt sailed through the water. The green Sectoid dodged to the left side toward the coral reef, nearly doing a somersault. The grenade bolt hit the side of the alien sub. No effect, of course not.

The green Sectoid returned fire, firing twice. Both shots missed. The first one threaded through the tight pack of marines, missing Claude by two feet. Claude felt a chill run up his spine.

"Everyone, stand clear!" shouted Tanya Olsen. She loaded her torpedo launcher, and hefted it up. It was essentially a massive cylinder with a red light on it to show when it was loaded. She flicked the switch next to the red-light turning the safety off.

The torpedo launcher made a thick, rushing sound as it went through the waters. Again the alien tried to dodge to its left, towards the reef. That was a mistake. The projectile hit the corner of the reef. The alien wasn't more than three feet from it now. Had it been fast enough to go around the corner, it might have survived. But it didn't…and it didn't.

Only the upper half of the green Sectoid's body was left. It flipped through the water, going quite fast towards the surface of the sea. As Claude watched, the creature's guts spilled out of it, a sickly orange mess.

"Good shot Tanya!" Henderson cheered. In the water, a fist-pump was slow and ridiculous and Rachel Henderson did it anyway.

"Stay frosty!" Laura shrieked. She sounded like she was on the knife edge of panic. "We don't know how many of his cocksuckers are in the reef!"

That much was true. In the First Alien War, the most brutal fights occurred in jungles and forests, and what was a reef if not a jungle in the water.

A Squad swam to the alien sub. Claude's squad swam around the left side of the massive reef. Claude was paranoid that a green Sectoid would just climb up the reef and start shooting down at them.

That didn't happen. Not to Claude or Tanya anyway. Ensign Rachel Henderson rounded a corner and got hit by a blast. Her scream seemed to wrap around Claude's head like a voice. Another Sectoid came around the corner. It was smiling. Its red eyes were merry and full of good humor.

Tanya screamed. She loaded another torpedo, but she wouldn't have enough time to fire. Claude swam out to the left, firing a burst from his jet harpoon. The shots went wild. The first sailed wild and handsome into the watery depths. The second crashed into the coral reef, nearly hitting Tanya in the back of the head. The third shot went into the sea floor in front of him, stupid and harmless.

Then the alien fired another time, lines shining on its body, bright yellow like the sun. The shot missed somehow. The seabed to the right of Claude exploded and he threw up his arms. Tanya swam right, into the maze of coral.

"Goddamn it!" Claude said. The alien fired again, the sound a bright, angry chirp in Claude's head. Maybe the pistol—Claude was certain that it was a pistol—wasn't that accurate after all. It flew past Tanya and Claude.

The alien started to make for the cover of the coral reef to the right of Tanya and Claude.

Claude nearly opened fire, but Tanya was in front of him. She was swimming backwards, trying to get out of his line of fire.

Claude opened fire again. First harpoon bolt grazed the alien's leg. The second lodged itself into the green Sectoid's knee. The third bolt went into its right eye. The effect on the creature was galvanic. It's alien pistol was dropped, moving up towards the sea surface. Its hands came up towards its ruined eye and it let out a high-pitched scream that Claude would remember for the rest of its life.

Tanya finished loading her torpedo launcher. She fired it at the green Sectoid before it would have a chance to recover. She fired it, and the Sectoid was no more.

"Holy shit, good job." Claude said, before he even thought he had the words.

"B Squad this is A Squad we need backup RIGHT NOW!"

Claude swam towards the ship immediately. It was the voice of his sister. Suddenly, every muscle in his body was pumped into overdrive. He swam deeper into the coral reef, his legs aching as he pumped them up and down. It was dark here but Claude went on: the sooner he cleared this area of the Mediterranean the sooner he could get back to his sister.

_You're going too fast._

Indeed he was. There was a flicker of movement to his right and the green Sectoid looked to be just as surprised as he was. The monster was propped up against the wall, a green weapon in its right hand that looked to be a pistol. Its left hand was propped against a portion of the coral reef for support. From its position, Claude guessed that it had been on the verge of ambushing his own squad.

It didn't get the chance.

Claude fired. His jet harpoon rifle seemed to raise itself. It fired with a thick _whoosh_ that sounded ridiculous to his ears. A massive bolt was lodged into the creature's right eye. Its head rocked back and hit a piece of the reef. It rebounded towards him, and in his terror, Claude fired again. None of it mattered. The monster, to quote the cop from Gangs of New York, was as dead as good Friday.

"X-Ray down!" Claude shouted into his mic. Nobody confirmed it. The sounds from the sub were getting worse: scream after scream. One of them sounded like Laura.

_Goddamn it!_

The coral reef was a purple expanse on his right.

"Hey, has the sub squad gotten back yet?" Claude asked.

Of course there was no response. Damn it.

The coral reef disappeared from view on his right, and the sub enlarged as he neared it. The front door had been blasted off. It was nearly obscured by a cloud of bubbles that was already thinning out. The thing had landed, so either a human or another swimming Sectoid had laid into. An aquanaut would've needed at least a magnapack explosive. The aliens…shit that was always a mystery: questions that needed answers that were always paid in blood.

Claude's jet harpoon was nearly empty, but as he reached the door, he was joined by Tanya and Rachel Henderson. Tanya had switched out her torpedo launcher for a hydro-jet cannon. The mini torpedoes it was loaded with were the green-colored armor piercing rounds. Henderson had another harpoon gun with two extra clips on her belt, along with a dart gun that Claude was certain none of them would have.  
"You frosty Diver?"

"Yes ma'am." Claude said, but his voice was shaking. Only a little, but he thought the others could hear it anyways. They didn't let on either way, and he was thankful for that.

"Good to hear." Henderson removed one of the harpoon clips from her belt. As she neared Claude, she let the clip drift over to him. He reached for it, missed it, and then grabbed it after it bumped into him and started to flat away.

"He's not _that _frosty." Tanya cracked.

"Zip it Olsen. I didn't ask for your opinion." Henderson said curtly. And Tanya did zip it. Thank God for small favors.

Claude exchanged the nearly empty clip in the harpoon gun for the full one. He didn't let the clip out into the wild blue waters, but placed it on his own belt. Just in case. Every projectile against these water Sectoids was a silver bullet—no different at all from the grays fought in the First Alien War.

Henderson gestured toward the sub's blown door. "We're heading in people."  
"No word from the sub assault team." Tanya said, and her voice had the same uneven quality to it that Claude's had. She looked nervously from him to the squad leader; and Tanya's eyes eventually settled on him. Something passed between the two of them. Something strange and unknowable. And then, almost instantly, it was gone.

He was snapped out of it by something Henderson said, "Of course, there's no word. That's why we're going in."

Claude and Tanya nodded at the squad leader, and readied their guns.  
"I'll take point." Henderson said. "I'm not the best, shot but I've got the best reactions."

Indeed she did: a rating of 60. The only thing faster than that would be a supercomputer.

They went in through the bubbles, which were so thin that the two doors on either side of the six-foot wide entrance were clearly visible. As the approached, Claude expected for another alien to jump out at them. And funnily enough, that's exactly what happened: another Sectoid exited from the door on the right, taking a step into the entrance of the ship without properly turning around. It was armed with the small weapon.  
Henderson fired immediately with two shots, and Tanya with only from the hydro cannon.

The former certainly hadn't been lying about her nothing special accuracy. The first shot bounced against the left door, somersaulting lazily into the ship until it hit the far wall. The next shot hit the alien's weapon. There was a strange, hollow sound in the air. The alien pistol was thrown from the creature's hand.

Henderson was too far into Tanya's line of fire. The AP bolt of the latter missed the former only by bare inches, and it would've missed the alien too if it hadn't tried to swim towards its weapon.

The AP bolt grazed the back of the alien's head. There was still enough force to send it spinning. Now it was facing them. A funny expression was playing on the creature's face. It did a heavy wink, as if it was flirting with the marines. But the eye didn't open back up. It remained shut. A faint mist of orange spouted out from the wound.  
The Sectoid's mouth fell open and it screamed. It wasn't a high-pitched scream like before, but a long, moaning sound. It made Claude sick to listen to it.

"Shit." Tanya whispered. Her gun was still leveled, but she'd apparently forgotten she had it.

Henderson didn't say anything in response to that. She definitely didn't order Tanya to fire again after the near miss; instead she gestured at Claude with her free hand.

"Finish it off Claude."

"What?"

"That's an order Diver." Henderson said. "I've wasted two shots and you have a full clip. Don't make me say it again."

Claude aimed his own gun at the creature. It was still screaming, and spinning around. Its limbs moved through the air but it wasn't their own locomotion. It was drifting around in that entrance no different from an object, and had actually spun around in a full circle.

_It's probably paralyzed, _Claude thought, and immediately following that thought he fired. One carefully aimed shot. It hit the water Sectoid far too low, where the intestines would be. The alien folded in on itself. Going ragdoll was the term for video games.

"Fuck."

Ignoring, Henderson ordered the three into the entrance. She had Claude set up to breech the left door while Tanya covered the opposite.

"Go." Henderson ordered.

Awkwardly, Claude reached for the door. He honestly didn't know how these things opened. But the UFO doors from the first war opened just by touch, at least the ones on the inside did.  
_Chuuuuun  
_ And it seemed like these doors opened no differently. Henderson was covering this door as well, and would only turn to face Tanya when she breeched her room after Claude did his.

The dropping door revealed a strong red cloud in the water, and his heart rose up into his throat and did a somersault there.

"Hello!" he called out. "If you can talk say something."

No response. Damn it.

The source was coming from his left; but of course the alien that had ambushed the marine cold be to his right as well. He had to guess, and the wrong guess could (and probably _would_) get him killed.

He didn't wait for Henderson to order him in again. She was heavy on skill but light on patience. He turned right, betting that the alien that had ambushed the marine was lying in wait. Indeed it _was_, its red eyes glowing like dying stars.

Claude raised his gun first. Fired off a shot. He had time to see the strange device in its hand before the harpoon took the creature in the leg. It shrieked in pain and turned to its left (Claude's right)and disappeared through another door…

Then it was blown right back out into Claude's room, doing a terrific series of backflips before crashing into one of the computers of the alien sub. Breaking it.

"What the hell?"

Henderson flanked him on the right, pushing him further into the room a little, so that she could aim at what he'd shot at. Then saw the broken sub computer and the dead Sectoid drifting towards them. A four dart rounds, and not a larger harpoon round, had landed in a shockingly tight group in the lower half of the alien's face. Its jaw and mouth had come apart and was now floating near where it'd hit the computers.

"I'm coming out!" croaked a frantic, weary voice. Claude's sister Laura appeared out from the door. Her eyes were pale and waxy.

"Sissy!" Claude cried out, not caring one bit that he was using the nickname his four-year old self had given her. He was ecstatic…then he saw the faint (but not _that _faint) red cloud just below her.

_Oh God. _

Her right leg was gone. She had the thigh, the knee looked okay; but after that her shin had only three or four inches to its name. In that red cloud, Claude thought he could see a faint point of grey: the exposed bone.

_"Squad leader." _Tanya's voice. _"I'm commencing with my breach." _ The same mechanical sound followed a loud curse and the thick sound of the hydrojet cannon firing a long, ten-round burst. Another alien screamed. _"Scratch one more!" _Tanya said, with unmistakable pride.

Tanya's joy didn't last long either way. She went further into that right side of the sub, and saw what was left of the sub assault squad. Then she screamed. Henderson yelled at her, continued to yell at Claude, continued to nudge his shoulder (and she really wasn't nudging now, she was had actually driven him into the wall opposite of the doorway he'd been standing in). Laura was slowly gliding over to him. Her mouth moved. She was saying something too.

Claude heard none of it. Time spun out away from him, and it was at least two days before he managed to catch up with it again.


	3. Pt 1: Ch 3--Rainbow

Three

[1]

The next seven days were not just bad: they were embarrassing for XCOM. On the 17th of January another small USO was spotted in the Atlantic. Daphne "Rainbow" Sixx was sent after it. Her Angler sub was outfitted with the new depleted uranium pellet headed torpedo launchers. A heavy weapon compared to the Ajax torpedoes, with two-thirds more damage and range. She'd hate to be on the receiving end of it.

Like New Year's Angler, she had two of the launchers. _Unlike _Year's Angler, this one didn't have room for any gas cannons. The DUP torpedoes were large and bulky and their launchers equally so, and took all the hardpoint space on the Angler as a result.

"Sacred, I have the enemy padlocked." Rainbow said. She zoomed in on it. It was similar in size to the "medium scouts" of the first war. That was good. A single DUP explosion would probably put the bastard out of commission, and two would almost certainly destroy it.

_This'll be a piece of cake, _Rainbow thought. A slow, steady grin went across her face. There was something picking at the back of her head. A nagging thought that she couldn't quite place.

Suddenly a voice blared through the com channel. _"Angler-2! Rainbow? Do you read me?"_

"What is it New Year?"

_"__You're pulling ahead of me." _On the sonar, Angler-1 was about 40 kilometers behind him. As Rainbow looked at the sonar, the distance between them increased to up to 50 kilometers. Then 55 kilometers.

She had a curious habit when she was flying…well _sailing _was the correct term, regardless of all the flying she'd done: that habit was shaking her head, shortly and sharply, when she heard or saw something she didn't like. She never did it out of the craft, and hadn't noticed it all these years until her sister mentioned it to her during a flight.

She shook her head now, listening to New Year's bitching ."That's what happens when you don't look at the ADP."

_"__Don't throw acronyms at me you bitch."_

Rainbow shrugged. "Not my fault if you're stuck in a current hitting you in the face. That's why we have the ADP. And it's not my fault you didn't check it."

"Sixx…"

"I've already got the enemy in range."

"_But…_"

"Don't worry, mom, I'll use protection." Rainbow said, sniggering.

The green cursor on her cockpit began to settle on the enemy sub. It turned red. _Target locked._

"Eat this." Rainbow whispered, and pulled the trigger.

The DUP torpedo made an immense rushing sound. It made Rainbow think of every commercial flight she'd ever been on, when the jet turbines started spinning and the sound was in your ears from liftoff to landing. Only here, the enormousness was all compressed to about two seconds. Punchy and sharp as it exited the sub, and fading out almost as soon as it was out of range.

Rainbow's grin broadened. At the speed the DUP torpedoes traveled, it would reach the scout in about four seconds. _One for the money, two for show, three to get messy, and four—_

She remembered the nagging thought, and the grin on her face faded.

_It was damn hard to hit that thing. _That's what New Year had said. When had he said that? Two days ago? Four? He'd talked to the others about it, the technicians and scientists, and by the time he'd brought it up to her, she was half asleep (well more than that really) in her bunk across from him.

What was the line Agent Tex was fond of saying? _You have no IDEA how much trouble you are in._

The alien scout banked to the left. The motion was so fast she didn't even _perceive _it. One instant the DUP had nearly reached the scout vessel, then it was sailing past the craft on its right side. The DUP's targeting system tried to autocorrect. It banked with the alien sub, but it wasn't even close: the sub dodged it by more than a hundred meters.

"Damn it!"

New Year's voice again, making her ears hurt like a bastard. _"Sixx! What's your status?!" _

"The first DUP went wide Jordan." she roared into the comm. The alien sub evened out again, going straight and slightly up. It was going toward the surface. They were near a shipping route, the Atlantic Passage, where gargantuan ships hauled tons of crude oil freight from the US (still the world's biggest exporter after all these years) to Europe and Africa.

Rainbow tried not to think what would happen if all that crude oil was shat into the Atlantic.

She brought the Angler up behind the alien scout, and got the next DUP locked on. She fired, hoping that perhaps the alien pilot (or pilots) would get caught off guard. No such luck. At seemingly the last second, the alien sub did a nose dive. Again, it was a wide miss. The DUP had gotten no closer than 100 meters from the sub.

_Just how the fuck is it going so fast, _she thought

Suddenly, it _wasn't _going that fast: she was gaining on the alien scout. Gaining too fast. MUCH too fast. For a moment, she was too stunned to do anything, her hand putting slight forward pressure on the stick, making her dive only barely. She zoomed in on the thing. Its backside with the two eyes wasn't facing her anymore. No know, she could only make out a shape like the tip of a sword. As she watched, two twin holes opened up on the left side of that tip. Instantly, they began to glow with a sick green color.

She had time to think, _It's heading toward me, _when the thing opened fire. The sound was heavy and odd, and to Rainbow's mind came an immense and powerful alien bird, with four wings and two tails. A loud chirp. Funny sounding.

_Enemy sub return fire, _the Angler said.

"No fucking kidding!" Rainbow roared, she tilted the Angler up, trying not to notice the shots that whizzed just in front of cockpit. One of them glanced the left wing of the craft, making it shudder. The stick jostled and writhed in her hands, seeming to have a life of its own.

_The flying sub has been damaged._

She banked a hard left, and took another hit. This one was deeper, where the left wing connected to the torso of the Angler.

"Angler 1, come in!" Rainbow shouted into the comm. "This is 2! I am under fire! Repeat! Under! Fire! How far out are you?!"

_"__Reading you 2! I'm still 30 km out." _

_Fuck, _she thought, _I _shouldn't _have gone so damn far ahead of him!_

But it was too late to worry about that now. She checked the sonar; the ship was 15 km behind her, half of Ajax torpedo range. Now the enemy fire was coming at her in earnest, like a continuous machine gun being fired.

_Not just an alien scout, _she thought numbly, _It's an alien FIGHTER sub._

Another hit rocked the sub, shaking the controls. Somewhere in the ship, Rainbow fancied she heard the sound of leaking water. Or maybe it was just her imagination. Hopefully it was.

"No. No. No."

She sped up, unsure as to what else to do. She banked the ship left and right in what she hoped wasn't a predictable pattern. Maybe it wasn't. The alien scout was missing its shots now. They passed the cockpit of the Angler in thin and faintly green lines. The tip of the right wing took a hit, nothing very serious. Then it took _another_ hit, and that was a bit more serious. The Angler started drifting to the right. She tried to correct it, but the controls would not respond.

Something sailed past right side of the cockpit. Not a sonic attack from the sub but a torpedo.

New Year's voice blared in her ears again. _"Hang on 2! I'm almost there!"_

_Flying sub moderately damaged, _went the Angler. Rainbow looked up at the hull integrity display. Both wings were red, better than them being completely blacked out, but worse than everything else. That explained why the controls were fucked. A small, but strong, explosion shook the craft, and sent it into a spin. The G-Forces on her body were crushing. The darkness took her almost immediately.

"I'm going to die." Rainbow whispered to herself in the beeping sub.

And knew that it was true.

On the way down, she dreamed of a city in the sea.

[2]

Jordan Year thought: _Well shit. _His hands had a death grip in the joystick, which was necessary, because his hands were a damn sweat slick. A dozen images came to him as he got within 30 kilometers of Angler 2: the sub itself being consumed in an explosion, tiny pieces scattering off here and there into the watery depths, and among it would be a foot here, and a hand there, maybe even a red pieces of coarse, curly black hair.

_Told her to stay back, I told her to stay back._

He zoomed in on her. Both wings were flaking apart as he looked at them, and the underside of Angler-2 was leaking fuel. He'd seen the shots from the alien scout: they were faintly green, and distorted the water around them. The shots were small but their signature on the sonar was huge. It was like a massive battleship-sized blimp was down here in the water with them. As the shots passed by New Year's Angler, the craft rattled, if only slightly. He might not have been able to locate her at all, if it weren't for the clear waters, the fact that they were sailing around in daytime, and the fact that he was visually locked onto Sixx's position.

He pressed the comm. Button and told her to hang on.

Suddenly, her sub was hit again and it was sent spinning. No fire, and why would there be? It's not like the ammo if the aliens could make things combust. Instead shards of ship scattered away. His heart sank, and he knew Rainbow was either dead or close to it. The cockpit was still intact, but the rest of Angler-2 certainly was not.

_Hang on, _ he thought. Was he thinking it to her or thinking it to himself. It didn't matter.

He locked on quickly to the alien sub. That the alien scout would dodge all the AJAXs was a certainty, but maybe he could maneuver behind it and open up with the gas cannon. Its slugs flew too fast and were fired at too close a range to be dodged.

_Okay, let's give it a shot. _He opened up with two AJAXs, firing the second one about four seconds after the first. He thought the alien scout would bank away from him. It did bank, but towards him instead.

_He's going at me headfirst as well. _But that wasn't too bad. It meant Sixx's Angler wouldn't be finished off.

The AJAXs autocorrected, curling towards the alien sub. The turns of the smaller torpedoes were significantly tighter than that of the DUPs. The alien scout did roll out of the way of the first AJAX, but the miss was close. And the sub didn't keep on rolling, it did two rotations and that was it. The second AJAX had plenty of time and distance from the alien sub to track the laterally moving target.

New Year shook his head. _It doesn't matter. It's just going to roll again. _

But, strangely enough, it did not. For a moment, it didn't even _fire _at him. The glowing green hardpoints on the bow of the sub momentarily faded into dull black eyes.

_What's going on? _He stared at the ship, which seemed to be _trembling _in the water, if that could be believed. It moved like a dog trying to shake the rain out of its fur.

It did manage to bank slightly at the last second, but it was far too damn little and far too damn late. The AJAX crashed into the starboard bow of the ship. The explosion was small, and its sound was distant, but it was strong enough. The alien sub's bow was rocked upwards, and the thing started doing cartwheels, dark orange pieces of it shooting out from the explosion—along with a little bit of green that might have been one of those underwater Sectoids.

_That's right you cocksuckers, _New Year thought. The alien sub wasn't recovering from its frantic spin. Disabled most likely.

_Over just like that? _New Year thought, and a reluctant smile creased his face.

He debated between dumping another torpedo into it or closing the gap and cleaning it up with the gas cannon. The ammo of the later was dirt cheap, and he didn't need to blast it until it exploded completely. He just needed to lay into it. Make sure it wouldn't start moving on its own again.

Then his mind went to Rainbow. He fired off another AJAX. When following the explosion, there wasn't much of anything left. Fine with him, fine with the XCOM marines most likely, but probably not so fine with scientists and the technicians: both really wanted their chubby, non-combatant fingers on alien tech. Well let them come out here if they want it so badly.

He piloted the Angler over to Rainbow's sub, the spinning of which had slowed to an almost graceful twirl. New Year pressed the comm. button. "Angler-2. This is 1! Do you read?"

Silence.  
"I repeat! Do you copy?!" his voice was unbearable hoarse, his throat unbearable dry.

He kept at it until his sub was within five kilometers. From that point, he just focused on getting to the ship as fast as possible. She scanned the debris he passed by as thoroughly as he dared without slowing down. Her cockpit had _seemed _intact before he engaged the alien sub, but who could've really said for sure?

Finally, he reached it, getting in front of its path. Yep, the cockpit was intact and Rainbow looked intact. No fatal wounds he could make out from here.

Angler-2 bumped against Angler-1, stopping much of its movement but not all of it. That was fine; he just needed to slow it down.

The instruments of the cockpit were all completely waterproof and would be fine at this depth. He opened it, trying not to let the incoming rush of water unnerve him too much. Embarrassing as it was to say, he wasn't much of a swimmer. The only thing that could get him in the water was a self-contained suit like the one he was wearing. It was a primitive, nothing special diving suit, save for one feature: it had a switch on the left forearm, and when you pressed it, the gloves became magnetic.

He swam as best he could with no flippers. He could do a broad stroke that would've looked fine on a seal suffering brain damage. He pressed the magnetic switch on his suit. A light on the back of his glove turned on. He clung to Rainbow's Angler

_I hope the external cockpit switch isn't busted, _New Year thought, and sure enough it wasn't. Thank the Random Number God for small favors.

Inside, Rainbow was tucked up in nearly a fetal position. No telling how that happed. The cockpit wasn't roomy enough for someone like Year to do such a thing, but Rainbow had little problem with that.

He released the two safety belts around the waist and chest, and took Rainbow into his arms. Her helmet was a thin crack running through it. Blood was flowing out of both nostrils, but not her ears (which he knew was bad) and not her mouth (which he knew could be even worse). He couldn't feel her pulse through the suit. Of course those prick assholes that had the nerve to call themselves scientists hadn't bothered to figure out how to make med-kits work underwater, so she'd getting jack shit in terms of care until they got back to base.

Even as tiny as she was, the lady was surprisingly light in his arms. Year figured the waters would've made her weigh a ton. Or maybe they did and he was too pumped full of fear and adrenaline to notice.

Another thing to thank the Random Number God for: the technicians had talked about further modifying the Angler, already a heavily modified version of the original Barracuda.

The rear cockpit, where a sonar intercept officer (SIO) would be seated was considered unnecessary. A pilot could use comm. well enough that you didn't need someone doing just that; though it also served as a gunner seat. To that effect, the Angler were slated to become single-seat, with the second cockpit being replaced with just about anything else: extra fuel, a bigger engine, more ammo for the hardpoints. Things of that nature. In fact, both Anglers 1 and 2 were slated to be single-seat only in a no more than two weeks. Had this disaster happened then…

_Don't think about that shit, Jordan. Put Daphne in the rear seat, shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of here._

A good order, and he damned sure was going to follow it.


	4. Pt 1: Ch 4--Night Mission

Four

January 19, another alien sub landed, 300 kilometers off the coast of Ghana. News of Daphne Sixx's nearly fatal experience spread through the base like Captain Trips. A medium sized scout had put their second-best ace in a coma, and she was currently in the infirmary under the watchful eye of Kurt Kissinger. "Kiss" as the Sacred Tear's personnel liked to call him, was a good doctor; but the best he'd been able to do was to simply keep her from being dead. He had no idea how long she'd be in the coma (the death-sleep it was called), and there was no point in even lying to people by given them in estimate.

Triton-1's pilot tried not to think of any of it. Worrying about Rainbow—a right bitch she was but good at what she did—would not help anything.

Now, the Triton's pilot looked over her shoulder. She informed the Divers that they would be setting down in the dead of night, and every single last one of them groaned in frustration. They were all seaman, and that was problem number one. There was no commanding officer to work as a buffer against panic. The people who had assaulted the previous submarine and survived were all still fatigued.

Debbie Genin, Susie Parks, Richard Third, Quentin Watson, Larry Zander , Bobby Reids, and Sasha Putin had at least two weeks worth of training in the barracks. Below the rooms where they all slept was the football field-sized transparent box known as the Battle Zone. Every two days, these seven were drilled in the Battle Zone against automated drones.

The other seven, Peter Easton, Kurt Deniker, and Erik Heinrich, Haru Ichiro, and Ryo Nanaba and Henry O'Leary had come to the base that very same day. They had an hour at most in the Battle Zone. Ryo hadn't even been able to hit anything. It usually took about a week in the Zone for it to judge their combat ability.

This alien sub, similar in size to a large scout UFO, was dubbed the Cruiser. Just like the Large Scout, XCOM marines could look forward to enemy numbers ranging from a half dozen to a full dozen. They would perhaps be Aquatoids again. That's what the scientists called these new underwater Sectoids.

That's what Triton-1's pilot hoped anyway. It was nearly the end of January. During the first month, Floaters had shown up the first month along with Sectoids, at around this time. In some places on Earth, Floaters had been seen before Sectoids. Floaters had slightly better combat performance, health, and they could fly; but Sectoids were the bigger threat when there were leaders around to fuck you up with psychic attacks.

Aquatoids probably had something like that, and the pilot was pleased as punch she wouldn't be in the shit storm that would result.

It really _was _dark. Even the large headlights, the size and strength of those of an 18-wheeler, couldn't pierce the darkness that well.

The pilot looked over her shoulder. "You guys have flares right?"

Easton looked around the Triton floor. "Ummmm…."

"Look for it dipshit." Ryo said, shortly.

"Fuck you Sushi." Easton replied, not even looking at the guy.

Ryo stood up. "What the hell did you call me?"

_"__Are you all fucking children?" _The Triton's pilot roared. _"Shut the fuck up and YOU, sit down."_

Ryo's eyes bugged. For a moment, the pilot thought he would try and take a poke at her. That was fine: she was a _lot _stronger than she looked, and people like Ryo always ended up learning the hard way. He grumbled something, and then sat his happy ass back down.

"Have the new stun rods come in?" Susie Parks asked.

"They're the tazers you see right there." Easton pointed to them. The rather than gun-metal orange, they were

"Next to the hydro-jet cannons." Richard Third indicated. He and Debbie Genin were rated for heavy weapons, so picked up the first hydro-jet. Debbie reached for second. They were both strong enough to carry two extra clips along with the ones in their guns, hardly an easy feat.

Quentin Watson was the heaviest, and so he carried a torpedo launcher. He had not one but _two _dart guns as a backup, with an extra clip on his belt. Aquatoids wouldn't be able to stand against that kind of firepower.

Most everyone else had the jet harpoon rifle. Susie Parks and Haru hand magnablast grenades strapped to their shoulders.  
"Something just occurred to me." Haru began. Everybody looked at him, and he immediately got nervous and stammered out his next sentence. "Well….uh….I was thinking…uh, it wouldn't make s-s-suh-sense for them to give us f-flares."

"What're you talking about." Quentin asked. He was examining a magnapack.

"Because you can't throw things underwater." Haru continued. "That shit doesn't make any sense right?"

"I guess." said Larry Zander. He was the quiet one: it was a notable thing that Zander had talked at all.

"Look, see here?" Haru indicated the orange rounds scattered on the Triton floor. "Phosphorous rounds."

"How do you figure?" Easton asked.

"It says so on the clips." Haru said simply, bent down towards one. He picked one up, with its fat, bright slugs. "This is one for the gas cannon."

"This is for the hydro-jet." Haru said, picking up the clip with the thinner orange rounds. He threw a pair of them to Debbie Genin and Richard Third, who took them gratefully.

Quentin picked up a rocket, one of the only two orange ones on the floor. Only it was their middle that was orange, and hollowed out, so that the liquid chemicals inside of it could be seen.

"This is for me I reckon." he said. "Bit heavy though."

"J-just leave one of the regular rockets on the floor until you need it." Haru said nervously.

"That's good thinking Ichiro."

Haru smiled nervously.

"Say…you know how to use that thing right?" Quentin asked him. He'd noticed the awkward way Haru Ichiro was holding the harpoon rifle.

"Uh…yes?"

"Then maybe stop pointing it at Ryo, won't you?"

Haru got quite a few jeers from the others.

The darkness of the ocean was thick and deep. As Debbie Genin looked into it, she was reminded about that old Nietzsche quote: the one about the abyss staring back into you.

_But it's not the abyss staring back, _she thought, realizing for the first time since dust off that her heart was racing inside her chest. She felt the burn of eyes from the dark—they were red-hot and as they settled on Genin, on her face, they narrowed from wide circles of alarm into narrowed slits of flat hatred.

Or maybe that was just her imagination.

The phosphorous made the first two minutes relatively standard. The heavy weapon users went out first: the gas cannon and hydro-jet users went out together. Quentin would be backing them up with the torpedo launcher.

"I'll put some light out." Quentin said. He leveled the torpedo launcher.

"No!" Debbie cried out. "Don't fire that shit off when we're all still here in the sub!"

Quentin put the launcher down, an embarrassed grin on his face.

Richard Third put a hand up. "Let me first."

He fired a phosphorous into the black. There was a bloom of light. And _fire. _The water was on fire.

Specifically, the pink coral reef on the port side of their Triton. It was spreading out from the seabed in bright, groping fingers. As the phosphorous flames touched them and spread, the reef-fingers flailed like whips.

"Cool. " Easton said, open-mouthed.

"Stop standing around gawking like a bunch of retards!" Ryo Nanaba roared. He shoved Richard and Debbie forward. They swam out throwing curses back at him. Ryo showed them the finger and told them to get a move on.

They fanned out, Richard and Debbie turning left and heading to the stern of the ship. Quentin followed them out. He fired a blind shot into the flaming coral reef. The explosion was large, but the scream that followed it was even louder. It was different from that of the Aquatoids. The pitch was mostly similar but sounded angrier, almost like a roar.

None of them kept their eyes on the coral reef. So when a green blast shot out of it, they were all taken by surprise.

It was a larger, heavier sound than that of a sonic pistol. The sound was heavier, heartier. It sounded like a thin gong being struck.

The shot went from one end of Easton's shoulder to the other. He was perhaps dead before the shot exited his body. Kurt Denniker had been the one closest to him.

"Nein!" he cried out, sweeping his rifle in an arc in front of him. "Fuck they got one of us already!"

The upper half of Easton's body hit the port side of the Triton with a hollow thumping sound, and rose up into the depths. His blood spilled out everywhere, spreading like a sickening fog. Denniker recoiled away from it, but the legs brushed up against him, causing him to misfire his harpoon rifle.

The harpoon clipped Richard Third's helmet. It'd done nothing more than clip it. It hadn't even cracked it.

It didn't matter.

Richard screamed and opened fire with the hydro-jet. He'd forgotten that the only had phosphorous rounds in it rather than the high explosive rounds. He succeeded only in spreading more of the phosphorous, and not much of it either. XCOM tests in the Battle Zone would later confirm that "phosphorous on hydro-jets more or less suck the root. "  
A monster came out of the burning reef, and it was man-sized (perhaps a foot taller). Susie Parks locked eyes with it and thought it looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It had no weapon that any of them could make out, but their eyes were drawn to the fire. It followed the creature as it swam out from the reef towards them. I's arms were outstretched and it clawed through the waters rather than swam it.

Susie Parks panicked and fired a burst from her harpoon rifle. She was rated with high firing accuracy but all of her shots missed.

Bobby Reids was beside her. He fired once. The round hit the monster in the leg. That was enough. The Black Lagoon creature was knocked into a hilarious series of front flips. It was still flipping pretty fast when it banged its head smartly against the Triton's hull. Its head came apart at the jaw.

"Fuck." Haru said. He was a nervous boy (and at 19 years of age he really _was _just a boy) but it was a shock just how even and calm his voice sounded. He gripped his harpoon gun tighter.

Susie put a round into the drifting body of the new alien type. The body spun away from them like it was doing ballet.

She glanced at Reids. "Just makin' sure."

"Man…I hear that." he said breathlessly.

Susie Parks and Bobby Reids scattered toward the stern of the ship. Quentin swam up, hoping to fire his torpedo down at any of these new creatures they caught swimming close to the seabed. Just like a video game, it was easier to kill with the splash damage than it was with a direct hit.

Reids saw the alien sub first. _"Enemy cruiser fifty meters in front of me. You guys see it?"_

"Negative." Quentin said. "Let me light things up for you."

He took the phosphorous torpedo out of his backpack. This ammo was already striking the heavy weapons expert as more trouble than it was worth. Already the coral reef below him had nearly stopped burning, and it had barely been a minute. What kind of happy horseshit was that? IC-rounds from a heavy cannon or auto-cannon were said to be able to clear forests and jungle like it was nothing.

He aimed and fired.

People could say what they wanted about the torpedo launcher; it was damn accurate. At least, it was when you took the time to train the scope on a piece of land (or a person) and let the thing do its work. You couldn't miss. A bright orange-yellow flower erupted in front of his brothers in arms.

_"__Thanks Quentin!" _Reids shouted. _"Shit, we got another green thing coming out from the sub entrance."_

Quentin squinted his eyes, and thought he saw it. He loaded another rocket, the small one. The larger ones barely did any more damage and weighed nearly twice as much as the small ones.

In the distance he saw the tall green form. It was taking a few pot shots at Susie Parks and Bobby Reids, who took a few pot shots at it. The monster retreated from the returning fire, and swam back towards the sub. It was probably trying to find a good place inside of it, to hide and ambush.

It never got the chance. Quentin's torpedo detonated about four meters away from the retreating green alien. The explosion sent its body careening up over the sub.

Haru was quite weak and found even the harpoon rifle and two extra clips a bit too heavy for him. He traded them out for two dart pistols, and put three extra clips of that in his belt. Cool. No problem. He swam cautiously out of the sub, even though his fellow divers were starting.

_"__Me and Parks are heading to breach the sub."_

Parks panicked voice: _"Uh…we are?"_

Genin's frightened voice blared: _"Forget that noise Bobby. There's still a wide reef to the west."_

_ "__You guys handle that. I don't want to be caught out in the open fighting these things. They're more accurate than us."_

_ "__And I don't wanna fight them at close range!" _

_ "__I don't wanna fight them at any range!" _Haru said, his voice cracking up.

There was stunned silence on radio. Then all the divers burst out in frantic laughter. For about thirty seconds, they were all in a state of relative ease. Easton was dead sure, but that was XCOM. They all knew the dangers. And whatever these new aliens were, they blowed up just like Aquatoids. Two of them, maybe even three, were already expired. If they played their cards right, they'd come out on top with yet another salvaged alien sub…and perhaps a few new weapons for the eggheads and techies to look at.

Then the phosphorous went out. The coral reef between the Triton and the alien cruiser had no more fuel left to burn.

Its light was extinguished like a blown candle, and they were all swallowed in darkness again.

Then the slaughter happened.

Quentin felt rather than heard a quickening hum go off behind him. He had enough time to turn around, but little else.

The green monster had perhaps been hiding behind the starboard side of the Triton. That was the great flaw of the Triton. It had the doors that could close and leave you safe, whereas the open ramp of Skyrangers left you pretty screwed, especially if the aliens tossed in a grenade. But, none of that mattered now. What mattered was the gun the alien was pointing at him. The bluish-green weapon was much longer than the small alien pistols but not much wider. It was a rifle. Its muzzle was a dark yellow.

The alien was larger than an Aquatoid, but only slightly taller than him. On the sides of its head were curling flaps that swelled out and collapsed in. They were gills. Red veins pulsed on the creature's body, only they were not veins, as they ran throughout the creature in straight lines and sharp corners. It's eyes were Asian-slits, with white corneas, but with no pupils that he could see. As Quentin watched the eyes turned as red as the glowing veins.

"Cybernetics." Quentin whispered to the monster. It grinned as if to agree. Red veins appeared on the alien rifle.

And for Quentin, the world became dazzling green…

Ryo and Debbie heard the gunshot and turned to see Quentin in two halves about ten meters above them. They stared in shock, before a second blast grazed Ryo's knee. Even just a grazing shot, Ryo felt his leg shattering as though a hammer had struck it.

He cried out, "Fuck!" Instead of turning around, he started flailing toward the alien sub, to the company of Parks and Bobby Reids. Reids was planting a magnapack on the double doors of the alien sub.

Debbie Genin turned to the Triton and saw the creature floating a ways above the it, it was staring dead at her. Red markings were all over its body, but already they were starting to fade.

Then Haru came out of the sub with Larry Zander behind him. They didn't see the monster above them, but it certainly saw them. It lowered its gaze, and pointed its weapon at them.

"Shit!" Genin cried out. She aimed the hydro-jet at the monster, feeling grateful that she'd switched out the phosphorous rounds for armor-piercing. It wouldn't matter if the weapon didn't hit though.

She was quite accurate for the distance, and the fact that hyro-jet had not much accuracy to speak of. All the same, Genin scored two hits. The left hip of the green monster rocked back, then its shoulder. A smile creased her face…then it was gone almost immediately.

Direct hits, but other than the body recoil, the thing didn't even look fazed.

The blood ran from Genin's face.

"Haru! Zander!" she shouted. "Watch out from above!"

Both of the Divers looked up, in time to see the alien aim its sonic gun at them.

Haru pivoted and swam back into the Triton in time. Larry Zander tried firing back with his own gun. He shots missed. The single shot of the sonic rifle did not. Zander's head melted, and his hands spread out in the manner of a preacher.

Debbie Genin and Ryo opened fire on the fucker. Most of their shots went wide (the hydro-jet _really _wasn't that good). The light from the alien gun's muzzle was starting to die out, and the creature was nearly swallowed in blackness that would certainly keep _it_ alive and _them_ dead. The phosphorous rounds from Ryo's gun had bright tracers. It illuminated the target a little as it passed them but not much.

Genin expended all her rounds and finally snatched the spare clip from her belt. High explosive rounds, probably not as good as the ones on the gas cannons…but it was something.

Ryo didn't need two. His last two shots crashed against the green alien's neck and left shoulder. It clutched the neck, which was already beginning to shine and to smoke. The alien's eyes were bugged out like a big pair of hands was closed around it.

It started flailing back and forth. It let go of its gun, and the thing corkscrewed lazily through the water. The alien turned over and over again. It sounded like it was screaming…or laughing.

"Dear God." Ryo whispered.

Neither one of them heard the sound of an object hitting the ground just below them.

Susie Parks and Bobby Reids heard none of it either. They were already inside of the alien craft. The former was far too frightened, her finger closed over the trigger of her gun, until a voice in her head told her to stop. She'd end up putting a harpoon bolt at the base of Reids' neck if she wasn't careful.

She thought back to the Battle Zone under the barracks. How easy it'd been to score well. But this shit…did any of them know what they were doing? What they were dealing with? No, they were done. This sub assault was over and their lives were over.

Bobby Reids, on the other hand was far too eager. There was a drumming going on between his ears. His head ached…in a good way. When the cruiser's doors were breached with the magnpack he went straight for the door on the right.

"Cover the one on the left for now." Reids said. "When I go in the right, you follow me in."

Parks nodded nervously. It wasn't very Susan B. Anthony, but she was scared off her gourd, and felt more than happy to let Reids take this cruiser by himself. Bobby Reids entered the starboard room of the cruiser, and rounded the corner. There was another green alien. He opened fire with his jet harpoon. One of the rounds took the monster in the eye. Another slammed into its chest, right where the human sternum would be. The force of the impacts knocked the creature into the wall behind it.

Bobby Reids cheered for about two seconds before he realized the creature wasn't dead. The harpoon that had hit its chest didn't fully pierce it, but instead shattered.

Blood-red markings lit up all across its body and the white slits it had or eyes resembled a human gash as they turned red. It had a two-handed weapon, but fired it with just one hand. The other was grasping the harpoon lodged in its right eye. Its remaining eye burned red like a star. It fired off twos sporadic shots. The second one went wide and handsome into the cruiser's ceiling but the first killed Bobby Reids before he even hit the wall behind him.

Susie Parks rounded the corner screaming, opening up with her own harpoon rifle, all of a sudden numb to the horror. Numb to the cold but persistent feeling of her fellow divers insides brushing against her diving suit. She opened fired and all three rounds hit. The alien struck the back wall again, much harder this time. There was a piece of machinery behind him (a computer or some such thing).

Henry O'Leary followed them in, ignoring he explosion behind him. He glanced behind to see if Ryo and Debbie Genin were still up. Even if they were, they were obscured by smoke, and he didn't want to be out in the open.

In the entrance way to the cruiser, he faced away from the door leading to the port room. He heard the door to the port room whine and whurr open, but before he could even turn it felt like someone had put a hole through his stomach and jammed a couple gallons of ice cream into it.

It was immense, searing pain. He looked down, his groan already rising into a scream, thinking that perhaps he was in a dream and roleplaying Bioshock. There was a drill point jutting out of his gut, and he thought he could make out thick strings that were perhaps his intestines.

Susie Parks killed the alien that killed Bobby Reids, then when she turned around there was Henry O'Leary. He well on his way to being dead, and his body had been pinned against the back wall of the entrance hall. This cleared the way for the alien to rush toward Parks.

Only it wasn't rushing, it drifted toward her at a leisurely pace, almost a drift. It was, in fact, the last surviving alien, but of course she had no way of knowing that. Certainly not from the smile, it had on its face—full of patience and good humor.

But the harpoon rifle clicked empty. She'd unloaded everything into the previous alien, and she was reaching into her belt for another clip when the monster took her down.

Deniker was currently at the edge of the combat zone, with his back to all the fighting. For the past ten minutes (and it felt like much longer) he'd found another coral reef structure and had hidden inside of it. When he finally got control of himself, he turned in the direction of the Triton and the alien sub…

…at least, he thought he was. The darkness was thick and heavy, almost seeming to be moving. Deniker remembered that the reef had been all burned out.

"Damn it." he muttered to himself. His gun was somewhere out there, floating haplessly in the dark…and it _was _dark down here. He could swim right by the fucking thing and not even notice it. He had his spare dart gun (whether it was useful or not it seemed like everyone had gotten off the Triton with one) and took it out of its belt. No spare clips for _that _though. He prayed to God that he wouldn't find anything alien between him and the Triton.

He started forward, hoping that he was going the right way. In the distance he could make out dim lights. He swam toward them, feeling a strange mixture of terror and dawning relief.

But as he neared the source, the terror began to overtake the relief…and then outpace it completely. The thing he was approaching was not the Triton. It was the tip of a pyramid. It was a very faint bluish color, about the size of the Triton if it had nothing else in common. Deniker put his hand in on it. It was beautifully and crisply smooth. It was like touching some precious metal.

The _very _narrow tip was shining the light. Behind it, he could make out another pyramid. No…there was a third off in the distance.

Tentacles emerged out from behind the second pyramid, touching at the structure as if to grab it.

Knowing he shouldn't, knowing it was probably another alien, Deniker swam towards it. When he rounded the corner of the second pyramid, all the breath went out of him at once.

It appeared to be a brain. A brain with long flowing stingers like a jellyfish. Thin spines went from its "lobe" to the back like a Mohawk. The brain turned to face him, the tentacles already curling up towards him, their tips shaking eagerly.

_Cool. I've always wanted to have green skin, _Deniker thought. He wondered what that meant. But as the alien swam toward him, Deniker decided it really didn't matter.

**AN: Next up? A much needed upgrade.  
Enemy Below Part 2: Gauss and Plastics. **


	5. Pt 2: Ch 5--Research

Part Two—Gauss and Plastics

In this dream I had a nice gun.

It shined like the noonday sun.

Let me tell you this on you hun.  
It's better than the last fucking one.

In this dream I had a nice blue tie.  
As smooth and clear as noonday  
A neighbor stopped beside and asked why.  
I told him I didn't want to die.

-The Book of Counted Range

[1]

Chapter Five

Research

January 18

"These are the blueprints then?" the technician Yamata asked the head scientist. "For the Gauss pistol?"

"Techie can you do me a favor?" the head scientist began, grinding the tobacco into his pipe with his finger. Yamata looked at the pipe with a mixture of happiness and grinding frustration. He'd been trying to quite tobacco for the past two years.

The two of them were standing in the mess hall. Yamata had just been leaving, and the good scientist had just been arriving.

Yamata asked, "What's the favor, sir?"

"Can you read me what it says on the top of the blueprint?"

Yamata rolled his eyes. "It says _Gauss Pistol Blueprints _sir."

"I figured as much." Dr. George Rankin said, and the expression on his face was amiable. "Seeing as how I made the blueprints and what not."

The technician ignored him and went back to the blueprint. The projectile, or bullet, would be ferromagnetic. The barrel would be a single magnetic accelerator, that when activated would shoot out the projectile with much more force than combustion would.

"I've got a question." Yamata asked.

Chief Scientist Rankin had started to turn away. When he turned back to Yamata, the pipe was cocked out of one side of his mouth, like he was a character out of some noir film. One black eyebrow, spotted with grey, was raised.

"Where's the blueprints for the weapon's clip?"

Dr. Rankin looked at him with a bewildered expression.

"It needs a magnetic projectile correct?"

"Of course you idiot." said Rankin, a bit too sharply.

"OK…" Yamata said the next words slowly, as if speaking to a child of no notable intelligence. "So where are the clips going to be held on the gun? Are they gonna be _teleported_ in from the Phantom Zone?"

For a good ten seconds (at least) Rankin said nothing. Yamata would later tell his subordinates that those ten seconds were better than the best sex Yamata had ever had.

Rankin shook his head, though Yamata didn't know if it was directed at him, or at Rankin himself. The pipe tobacco was popped out of his mouth.  
"I seem to have made a slight lapse in judgment." Rankin said quietly, losing much of his self-importance. That was fine with the technician, who just wanted to make everything was clean and smilin', as it should be.

"That's fine." said Yamata, and that was completely true. It really was fine. During the first alien war, researching clips for weapons took a fraction of the time it took to research the weapon itself. Rankin and his team of thirty scientists (with more incoming in no more than five days) would have it done soon, if not by tomorrow.

"I just want to make sure all the right ducks are in the right row." Yamata said finally. "It can be hard to see something like when you're busy worrying about your pipe."  
Rankin flinched at that, muttered something about being busy, and walked away.

Yamata breathed a sigh of relief. As Chief Technician, his job was only slightly harder. Captain Joe Vargas prioritized getting more scientists over getting more technicians. Yamata didn't mind. He actually preferred that XCOM got all the research out of the way, so they didn't have to play catch up later. Plus, when there weren't any more need of scientists, many would be let go; this would make room for more techs to build whatever weapons, armor and advanced subs were needed.

A nasty thought, Yamata realized, but this was war. And XCOM paid well enough so that even if the eggheads were let go early, they'd be sitting pretty on a good amount of cash until they found their next job.

Speaking of jobs, he needed to get back to his workshop so he could take care of his own. He went out the living quarters, looking over the blueprints as he walked. As he exited the quarters, he saw a bunch of new recruits come in. As corny as it sounded, Yamata loved the diversity of XCOM. Whether you looked at the team of Divers, the techies, or the scientists you always saw the face of the whole world and not just one country.

These recruits, going by their flag markings on the backs of their base uniforms, were from Finland, Egypt, Japan, and South Korea. The Egyptian guy tipped Yamata a wink. A very lecherous wink.  
_Peace be upon him, _the technician thought suddenly, and nearly burst out in shocking laughter. The large Japanese guy and the nervous-looking South Korean turned to look at him before going back to their business.

His face flushed.

_Volume control buddy, _he thought. He didn't want to end up like Pete Peterson. _That _had been nasty.

In Workshop B, Carrie Ulrich was finishing the touches on the new med kits. These ones had a yellow casing rather than a grey one, with no red cross on the front like the older models had. On the bottom of the case was an extendable and retractable tube ending in a needle. That's were all the good stuff came from.

It could poke someone through their diving suit without exposing the skin to the watery depths. When it was pulled out, the needle spewed out a waterproof and pressure-proof adhesive.

Carrie held the med-kit up, clearly proud of the thing. Then she saw Yamata, and brought out her poker-face. He liked that about her.

"New order?" she asked him. Trying to sound cold and professional. She might've succeeded if not for her eyes. They were bright and green and shined like daggers. She was excited: about XCOM, about her part in it.

Yamata put the blueprint for the Gauss pistol on the table. Moved it towards her. "New order."

She picked it up, looked at it carefully for over a minute. Just when Yamata was about to ask her for a response, she gave him one. She went over to the intercom and called for the rest of the technicians in the base to stop what they were doing and report to the lab immediately. No exceptions. No excuses.

She turned back to Yamata, smiling wildly.

[2]

Doctor George Rankin was pissed.

Not so much at himself. He'd made a simple misstep really. A slight lapse in judgment;, nothing more, certainly nothing that overshadowed the obvious genius of the weapon's system itself. That slant-eyed prick Yamata acted as if he'd never made a mistake in his life.

"Dr. Rankin!"

He blinked, and looked around and he was back in the autopsy lab. One of the water Sectoids was on the operating table in front of him, its chest opened up. The creature's ribcage (small and only a little bit sturdier than that of a humans) had been broken up with an electric bone cutter and deposited in one of the many jars sitting on the floor on the far side of the room.

"Are you alright?!" Hector Donovan asked briskly. "Do you need Mahmud to head this autopsy."

It took all of Dr. Rankin's self-control to stop himself from scoffing at that ridiculous suggestion. Mahmud was the most senior scientist next to Rankin himself, but he was a weak man. A meek man. He probably couldn't head a hotdog stand, let alone an autopsy.

"Of course I'm alright, fool." Rankin said, and bent his head down toward the alien. He said the next message as conversationally as he could. "Now where were we?"  
"Mahmud was commenting on the cybernetic implants." Donovan said.

Mahmud coughed softly before he started. Pathetic, Rankin thought.

"You see the implants here." he pointed to them. For some of the organ systems, like the orange circulatory system, Mahmud really didn't have to point out anything. The grey wires webbing through the heart and lungs stuck out like a rotting thumb.

"Some of the organs took to the implants well." Mahmud indicated. "The creature's heart and lungs certainly did. Inflammations here are quite minor. Nonexistent, really."

"What about its eyes?" Natasha Petrenko asked. Fairly new but already seemed to have a knack for asking the right questions.

"Similar to that of the Sectoids." Rankin said.

She gave him a funny look. "That's not what I meant."

Mahmud answered before Rankin could. "There's cybernetics there too."

There was a hot surge of sudden heat in Rankin's face. What, was this Gang Up on George Day?

"The Divers from the submarine assault mentioned markings started glowing on the aliens when they fired their weapons." Mahmud said. "This included the eyes."

"The cybernetics power the alien devices then." Rankin said, hoping it didn't sound like a question.

"Hector and I believe so." Mahmud said. "The Divers reported the alien weapons glowing red at the same time the aliens themselves did."

"But…we don't know this for sure of course." Donovan said quickly. "So don't quote us on it."

Rankin shrugged. "Sure. The cybernetics might glow when the alien is experience heavy stress—either emotional or physical."

"And the guns?" Petrenko asked. She didn't look convinced.

"Maybe they are alive too." Rankin said, half-laughing as the words came out of his mouth. The other scientists looked up at him, their airtight germ-proof suits making them look like alien visitors from an episode of the Twilight Zone. All of their protective suits had a bit of the orange blood on them. Donovan had been the one to apply the electric bone-cutter to the ribcage of the Aquatoid (yes, that name was good enough). Rankin thought his hands looked like he'd dunked them in a vat full of Cheetohs.

The scientists started laughing. It was frantic, hysterical laughter, with no rhyme and no reason.

_The laughter of badly frightened people, _Rankin thought. He started feeling bad about the cracks he'd thrown at Yamata, and the ones he _didn't _throw at Mahmud but nonetheless thought. A lot of people on this planet were about to get their worlds turned upside down, broken down, and then shat on for good measure.

When the fearful laughter was over and done with, Rankin was feeling better. About his team anyway.

"Any places on the Aquatoid that _don't _have implants." he asked.

Petrenko blinked at him. "The what?"

Rankin smiled thinly at her. "Our little bastard friend here. The _Aqua_toid."

The Russian lady cocked her head, frowning but with agreement.

"Yessir." Mahmud said. "The immune system…or what passes for it on the creature."

"We found something else." Donovan said.

"What?"

"We found evidence of some antifreeze compounds and proteisn on the creature's skin."

"Antifreeze compounds…" Rankin began…then his eyes grew wide. "You mean like what animals in the polar regions have?"

Mahmud nodded.

"Cryonics?" Petrenko asked. "Or cryogenics as some people call it?"

"Yes and yes." Mahmud replied, smiling briefly.

"I thought one of the creatures had been taken alive."

Donovan scratched his head. "One of them was alive when it was taken into the Triton, yes…but—"

"But the damn alien containment room hadn't been set up yet."

Donovan nodded.

"Fuck!" Rankin shook his head helplessly.

"It wouldn't have mattered anyway." Donovan said simply. "It'd been fatally wounded and the Divers had no way of healing it. Now they do."

Rankin nodded, not knowing how little it was going to matter tomorrow for the assault squad of the cruiser, of which only Haru Ichiro and Triton Pilot-1 would be a survivor. And it wouldn't help all that much four days after that, when the aliens launched their first surface attack since the sinking of the Oasis. Everyone knew what these acts were called, and everyone knew who would be obliged to respond.


	6. Pt 2: Ch 6--Night Terrors

Chapter Six

Night Terrors

January 25

"Officer this must be some kind of mistake." said the thief. He was a thin white boy, with glasses and a red jacket. According to the police that had had encounters with the thief, he wore this stupid red jacket even when he was indoors in the summer time, or outside in the winter. And from the moment Clarita Mendoza had knocked on the door, this idiot had done nothing but stare at her. Lecherously.

"Back up friend." said James Kelso. "Don't test her. Word to the wise." He was the large man to Rita's tiny woman. Of the two of them, she was the brawns while he was the brains, although the crooks had it in reverse almost every time due to their size. Rita could draw fast (very fast) and Kelso could _almost _talk any situation down.

It seemed like he could this time as well.

The thief, Peter Gibbons backed up into the main room of his apartment. Sink with an overhanging counter in the back, a widescreen TV that was probably a gift from one of his parents (the man wasn't employed). A small bookcase in the corner of the living room, next to the window. From here, Rita could see Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Ken Macleod. Rita had heard of the first two writers, but not the last. She wondered if the man wrote stories about drug cartel members getting their shit wrecked.

Wrecked by whom? Wrecked by anyone. The dick-less cocksuckers in New Mexico had certainly had no problem wrecking other people's lives. And what did the cunts get for it? Amnesty my friends. Amnesty and...whats this? Positions of power in the Mexican government. Well don't mind if I do! All thanks to the Republicans _and _the Democrats. Who said there wasn't bipartisanship in government?

"Tell us where the goods are Gibbs." Kelso asked.

"You've got a warrant right?" the thief said. "You can find it yourself then."

He paused, realizing that he screwed up. "Not that it's here mind you."

"Of course not." Rita said, grinning. "How about you take a seat on the couch friend?"

Gibbs sat down on the couch opposite the TV. He played with his hands.

Kelso started searching through the apartment, first going into the bedroom. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for.

"Here it is Rita!" Kelso said. The objects in question were prescription medications from the hospital where his father worked. Mirtazapine for depression. Naltrexone for alcohol cravings. Naproxen sodium for migraines. There was a large bag of weed and behind that a water bottle full of what was probably Green Dragon. Beside the bottle was a smaller bag, this one of cocaine.

"Tag it and back it, partner." Rita said.

"Yes ma'am." Kelso said.

Rita stood in front of the thief. "Stand up Gibbs."

"Officer, I…I can explain where all that stuff came from."

"Shut the fuck up and stand up."

He stood up.

Rita kept her hands on her service laser pistol. It was a newer model (not the newest by any stretch), and so could fire about 100,000 times before a new battery was needed. It was nestled perfectly in the holster of her alloy personnel armor. Alien alloys—or alloys that were very _similar _to alien alloys—were generally cheap to come by nowadays, as were their substitutes.

The armor of the ACPD was, of course, a dark blue. Their badge IDs were a yellow band on their wrist with a video screen that could display their name and number. Rita's grandmother said it made the police officers look like old fashioned superheroes of a sort, and looking at the online archives of those old DC and Marvel comics, some of which were a century old, Rita had agreed.

Not that she minded. She was no superhero but the alloy armors did a damn goodjob protecting the body from bullets (much better than Kevlar had) even if said bullets were rifle cartridges. Lasers were moderately more effective.

Unfortunately, a lot of criminal gangs had at least some laser weapons. The drug cartels had plasma weapons for a while…and not just pistols but the rifles and the heavy machine guns with 100 rounds.

Rita had Gibbs turn around (he seemed quite disappointed that he couldn't look at her now) and she cuffed him. The cuffs were _not _made from alien alloys, like the ones they used in New York, but they would hold the idiot just the same.

"You got any guns in this place?" Rita asked. She should've asked it before. She was too busy thinking about the stick she held in the hand in her mind, and how much Gibbs looked like a piñata. The back of his head, with his stupid hoodie one, was much better.

"No guns."

"You sure about that? 'Cause my partner's got his scanner out at the same time he's securing the drugs. If you got some heat in this place, I suggest you tell us now?"

Gibbs said nothing but shrugged his shoulders. She did the scanner and the place was clean.

Kelso came out with the goods with the drugs. They'd all been wrapped up in smart alloys—a product of Solmine—which could be dropped on an object and would wrap around it, securing it from being touched or tampered with. Her partner had placed all these bound items in a bag, which was then bound itself.

Kelso made two trips two and from the police car. It was an old Dodge Charger, illustrating that the ACPD, for its lasers and alien alloys, was far behind the tech of the Asian Coalition, or even the Syndicate.

"Finished on your end?" she asked him.

"Yep." Kelso said, and looked at Gibbs. "Let's go champ, time to face the music."

At this, Gibbs twisted up into genuine fear; his eyes grew warm and bright. _Soon, _Rita thought, _he'll start crying. _

Rita hated it when the bad guys cried. She would much rather the guy continue to leer at her. Even hit on her. If that happened Rita could just threaten to smack him until he stopped. Crying made all these criminals look like the damned spoiled children they really were.

But Gibbs didn't cry as they let him out of the apartment and into the squad car, and he didn't cry as the door slammed home. According to Morgan Freeman, from the Shawshank Redemption, that would change real fast once he got to an actual prison.

_As long as he doesn't start crying now._

Rita got in the driver's seat and pulled out of the apartment complex and onto the main street. Pine Valley apartments was completely across town from police headquarters. If Rita had cared to look to the right (which Kelso occasionally did), she would've seen the dark waters of the Atlantic in between the one-story buildings.

Maybe even the small green light that happened across the waters from time to time. The one that seemed more of a reflection of the wayward rays of one of the green lights they had passed.

But they probably wouldn't have seen it.

"I'm tired of this shit." Rita said suddenly. She _felt _tired as well as sounded it. Where did that come from?

"It's what you signed up for." Jack Kelso said, checking the clock on the police scanner. 9:01. The terror attack was two minutes away.

The police scanner spoke: _"All cars, we have a 10-10 in progress."_

Rita and Kelso blinked. The former felt fear, the first real sense of fear since she'd been 15, start clawing up at her throat from her chest.

"Watch the road!" Gibbs roared.

Rita applied the brakes in time. Barely. The car stopped two feet past the solid white intersection line. The cars on the left and right sides of the road eye paused, their drivers eyeing the police car with suspicion, before they drove on through.

"Sorry!" Rita said. She looked at Kelso, but couldn't help feeling that the words were directed at Gibbs in the back.

Kelso stared at Rita, his eyes wide and frightened. "A 10-10 in progress?"

_"__Yeah, that's what I said._ _Over at the Port Kris area."_

"Near Pine Valley? We just came from there." Kelso said.

"What's that mean?" Gibbs asked. "10-10? What—"

"Shut up." Rita said. Gibbs shut up.

"Hit the siren Rita."

Rita did. Immediately, the car began its high-pitched, rhythmic wailing. Rita checked the rear-view mirror, then both side mirrors. There were two cars behind her, but of course, she'd be on the other side of the road anyway. She did a U-turn, one perfectly legal, and drove back towards Pine Valley.

[2]

They were in the auxiliary parking lot for the port. Here was where the cabs whisked people away to one hotel or another, or to the Deacon Airport. But the place was deserted now. Rita killed the police siren but left the lights on. The dark port parking lot flickered red and blue.

Rita and Kelso opened their doors. "Get the rifle out of the trunk." Kelso said.

She went around the side of the car, eyes peeled, her laser pistol drawn.

"Officer." Gibbs said.

She ignored him. Opened the trunk with her remote keys. Here it was ladies and gentlemen: the Energen Laser Rifle Mark III. Again, the equipment was dated, at nearly ten years old; but you better believe it still worked plenty fine.

Rita took the rifle out, then the small med-kit (also quite old, at nearly_ fifteen _years), which she then fastened to her belt. In there were also two electric flares. She took them too.

"Officers!" Gibbs said again. He was staring at them from the right passenger window, his scared face seeming to fill it up.

"Shut your fucking hole Gibbs." Rita said shortly. She eyed the surroundings. A wide brick, one-story building in front of them. A two-story building beside that one. It was too dark to see anything much else.

"Why aren't the street lights coming on?" Kelso asked. He pointed to the one in the center of the lot and one behind it. The sunset had been four hours ago. The photo sensors in the lamps should've turned them on then.

And where the hell was their backup?

Kelso raised his pistol suddenly. "I got movement. At our three o'clock."

Rita looked and didn't see whatever he did. She took one of the flares out of her belt, and threw it in the direction he was pointing.

It was a person in a strange brown suit. For a moment, Rita thought she'd stepped into the Twilight Zone (the very _old _and very good series).

_Take me to your leader. _Rita said. An oldie but a goodie. But was that Twilight Zone or had that been The Day the Earth Stood Still? She couldn't remember.

The person shambled forward. Of course, it wasn't an alien suit. It was a diving suit. A dated one. _Maybe this guy works for the Auto City Government, _Rita thought ruefully.

"Freeze!" Kelso shouted. "Put your hands in the air."

The person in the diving suit kept walking toward them; and Rita felt a sharp pang of fear. The diving-suit person was fully inside the light of the flare now, his/her helmet moving left and right with the person's strides. Although, already Rita wasn't so sure about that: about the "person" part. The flare's light bounced off the helmet's visor, and there was no face inside that visor, but something translucent. Almost clear.

"Stop or I'll shoot!" roared Rita. She brought the laser rifle up to eye level. The gun glowed faintly red in the dark.

The thing in the diving suit increased its pace. It was past the flare now, its body concealed in darkness. What liquid, or jelly, or whatever it was, continued to shine. The metal boots of the suit came down on the ground with the sound of a slamming door.

Rita fired. Laser weapons, from the humble pistol to the Stella Mark II cannons they put on aircraft instead of the ballistic cannons of old, all made a similar sound. That beautiful _PWOOM _that was deeper and throatier the larger the laser weapon was. Laser cannons sounded the deepest and the throatiest of all.

In front of Rita there was a red flicker of light. Lasers didn't work in real life like they did in movies like Star Wars. The beam didn't shoot out like a _very_ slow bullet. It connected with the thing in the diving suit almost immediately…

…and it didn't go down.

_Fuck, _Rita thought. She fired a burst, and Kelso responded with one of his own. The shades of the personal armor began to tint automatically.

The diving-suit thing jerked and twisted and recoiled. Had there been music it would've looked like it was doing a funny little dance number. Smoke billowed out from the impact points in thin wisps.  
They fired what felt like two dozen rounds. Each. Then the alien (what else could it be?) finally toppled over.

There was a thumping sound. That was Gibbs futilely trying to bash open the squad car's door from the inside.

"Should be go over to it?"

"You first." Kelso said.

She shot him a dark look.

"Don't give me that. You've got rifle. Not me."

"Let's plug it a few more times." Rita said. "How 'bout it?"

"Sure."

They plug it more than just a _few_ more times. In fact, they probably hit it no less than twenty more times. The body writhed on the ground. Smoke flew up front it in a black curtain.

They waited.

Rita started to approach it. Even with the tinting of the shades attached to the personal armor, everything had a bit of a purple shade to it. That kind of thing couldn't be helped. It would clear soon enough.

The alien trembled a little. Then the alien started to get up. Rita shot it in the head, or the diving helmet rather. The helmet detonated like a thrown fishbowl. Dull blue liquid went in every direction. Some of it splashed on Rita's leg.

"Shit!" she cried, jumping away. She pulled too hard on the trigger and the rifle scorched the body's hand.

The alien in front of her lay back down again and did not move.

Behind her, Gibbs started screaming.

She looked at the spoogey shit on her leg. No Xenomorph blood, thank God, but it did fizzle a little bit. Hopefully just a chemical reaction that wouldn't fuck up the armor too badly.

"I think we did it." Rita said, turning. She was smiling as she turned; and when she eyes finally found Kelso, she felt a cold finger of fear that twisted the smile into a grimace. "What is it?"

He pointed. Pointed with his gun. Rita followed it. Of course, it was back to where the flare was still resting (those things could last literally for days), but it wasn't the flare that caught her eyes.

Not the flare at all.

There were more of them. About a dozen more. Their thin visors shined like computer screens in the dark. They shambled forward together, seemingly in unison. The gloves of one of them exploded, revealing four claws. Their shine was so hard and metallic it seemed to scream. The alien got within five feet of Rita, and its hand cocked backwards and up into the air, as though it were trying to hail a cab.

The laser rifle fired in her hands. Fired four times. Seemingly all on its own. She couldn't even feel her finger against the trigger (truth be told she could not feel her hands either).

The alien would be called a Calcinite. Why?

What did it matter?

What mattered was the last-moment rifle shots. In her terror, Rita's rifle had been aimed low, at her hips, rather than high. The shots nailed the Calcinite in the groin. Its lower body shot backwards, and the upper body tumbled down. The claws came within two inches of Rita forehead. The sound was thin and mute. A bang of Rita's dyed-brown hair fell away.

_A little off the top my good lady?_ Rita thought wildly, with a pained grin on her face that would've frightened anyone seeing it._ No, thank you sir. I very much _like_ my top._

"Kelso!" she shrieked, spittle flying from her lips. "You're driving! _Let's get the fuck outta here!_"  
Rita backed away, firing more shots. Firing into the crowd of Calcinites. They bucked backwards and their bodies twisted and jived.

Very few of her shots missed, and none of those misses were wide misses; but she nearly screamed at herself with each one. She got a lucky head shot on one, with an audible _snap _like a large firecracker being set off. The remaining body of this unlucky bastard stood motionless for two long seconds, the liquid gushing from its broken visor, until one of its buddies bumped into it from behind. Then it fell over.

Rita let out a shrill yell of triumph.

She backed away until her butt hit the front-passenger door of the squad car. She screamed, turned around, and nearly blasted out the door's window. When she saw it was just the door, she blinked stupidly at it until Kelso and Gibbs shouted for her to get in.

She got in and thought about rolling the window down. But she was so scared, the hand only limped numbly against the door.

"Where the shitting Christ is our _backup!_" Rita yelled. She sounded on the verge of tears.

Kelso could only shake his head.

"Where we going?" Gibbs asked, his voice high.

"Shut up." Rita said softly.

"We're getting out of here." Kelso put the Charger into drive. "That's what."

But they were not. And by 8 AM, the winter sun would not to come for another hour, only one of them would be alive.


	7. Night Terrors 2

Night Terrors Pt. 2

To give the two police officers and the one criminal credit, they nearly made it out of the port.

Nearly.

There _were _indeed two ways out. They'd come in front the tollbooth that went off Carpenter Road. Said tollbooth was currently sitting about one hundred feet behind them. The gate was obviously up, but nobody was in the booth. The booth had a light on, but there was the little matter of the Calcinites.

There were about a dozen of the fucks behind the Charger. At least two of them had their claws out. As they walked closer and closer to the squad car, the gloves of at least three of them exploded; and out popped claws, with their queer and hard shine.

Rita yelled at Kelso to back up. And he backed up. _Hard. _To Rita it was like being yanked by a fishing line. There was the shriek of tires on asphalt and Calcinites in front of the car immediately started shrieking.

"Don't hit them!" Gibbs yelled, but Kelso ignored him. He went straight back and Rita didn't think.

There was an immense crushing sound as of the alien's got run down. Rita thought she heard its helmet crack open with a colorful _pop _that made her smile in spite of how scared she was_._

Then the car ran into something solid that did not move, and stopped with a shuddering jerk that knocked Gibbs to the floor (they'd forgotten to belt him in, truth be told).

"Shit!" he cried out. His voice was high-pitched, like a girl's.

Kelso didn't hear him. The man's wide eyes were fixed on the rear-view mirror. A Calcinite had stopped the car, seemingly all by itself. It's large, padded gloves were pressing down on the trunk of the car. It might've been his imagination, but he thought he could see muscles standing up on the alien's diving suit, flexing with the effort.

He put the car in drive, and they shot out forward again. The admin building, and the Calcinites in front of it, passed him on the right. One of them swiped out its claws, and there was a loud terrible sound as the side-view mirror was released from the rest of the car. It banged against the passenger window, and Rita shrieked a curse.

They went North on Prone Lane, which went all the way through the port. Five miles this way, and eventually they'd hit Mille Street. In the water, ships listed on the waves; and Rita stared at some of the bigger ones. They still had their lights on, but nobody was walking the decks. The boats seemed to be staring at them. Or something inside them was.

Kelso cursed.

"What is it?" Rita said, turning to the road. There was a green thing standing in the middle of it. Kelso and Rita both knew it was an alien even before it raised a gun and started glowing red, its eyes like small red traffic lights.

Kelso kept his foot on the gas and did not attempt to dodge. That had probably saved his life. The lane running through the port was narrow, to the point of being obsolete. He could've dodged but not too much. The alien would've gotten a shot off, and its sonic rifle would've gone through the bulletproof windshield like it wasn't even there to begin with. Either he would've died or Rita would have.

Instead, he went straight at the alien. The alien, which was an Aquatoid, kept its gun raised for a half-second, and then thought better of it. Instead of rolling to its left or to its right, it decided instead to turn 180 degrees and start running down the road. No dice.

It _did _try to roll at the last second. Too little and much too late. The Charger shattered its shattered its legs. The Aquatoid shrieked, nearly startling.

Kelso panicked, turning when he didn't need to. He worked the steering wheel left and right, and the Charger swerved into a spin. They careened toward a boat.

"Fucking hell!" Rita, Gibbs, and Kelso screamed, nearly in perfect unison.

The Charger's spin carved a wild pretzel shape on the road. It came to a stop at the edge of the harbor, hitting the bow of a large boat with the trunk of their car. Gibbs screamed again. He was nearly crying.

In the road, about fifty feet in front of them, lay the Aquatoid. It was moving slightly. It was trying to crawl.

Kelso was wiping his face, wet with tears. "Duck…and cover." he sang weakly. "Duck…and cover."

Rita looked at him, her eyes wide.

"Jesus, Al. We ran him down. I felt it."

He began to giggle. Rita nearly slapped him. Instead she reached for his shoulder. He wasn't an especially large man, but she was an especially small woman. Putting her hand on him was like putting a hand on a giant.

She shook him. "Snap out of it!" God, she sounded even more afraid than him. Probably because she was. "C'mon Jack! I need you."

That seemed to help. He shook his head and turned to her, and his eyes became almost normal.

"What?"

"Get the car moving, Jack." Rita whispered. "Now."

He tried, but he could not. Their first thought was that one of the tires had blown. Then she remembered they'd been heading toward—

"Out of the car." she said suddenly. Then when Kelso gave her a funny look, "Move it, Jack. Goddamn!"

In her hurry to get out, she forgot her seatbelt was on. She didn't unfasten so much as ripped it off. She fell out of the car, swearing.

Rita and Kelso nearly forgot about Peter Gibbons. Then the thief bawled louder, and they were both rocked as if slapped.

"I'll get him." Kelso said. "Cover me."

Rita threw a flare out into the middle of the road. Nothing nearby…that she could see. Some of the streets in the distance were actually still on. Good. She spared one brief glance over her shoulder.

Only the trunk of the car was off the edge, suspended over dark Atlantic waters. The tip of the boat had stopped the car from sliding any farther, and had very likely saved them.

Rita had an image of all three of them falling into those dark waters, into _the drink _as her father would say. She could swim but knew Kelso could not, and in Gibbs' case it wouldn't matter because he was still cuffed.

Kelso worked him out, telling him to keep an eye out for the edge of the harbor. Gibbs had to toe the edge of the harbor when getting out. The back door itself was the biggest obstacle. It was block so much of his limited escape that for a few steps (ones that made his balls and legs feel like cold glue) half of both feet were on nothing more solid than air. When he finally made it around the door, and all of him was on solid concrete, he nearly fell to the ground with relief.

Kelso ordered him up. It was supposed to sound authoritative but sounded more like begging.

Rita had them march North on the road, towards the exit. It was a big gap in the port wall about twenty feet across, with a horizontally sliding gate for a door. The gate was concealed in its sheath. Through it, she could see the lights of houses across from the port.

She swelled with dawning relief, but then the old question

(where is our _back up_?)

came and to her and didn't curb her good feelings so much as riddled them with laser fire.

An explosion from the city. From beyond the port wall.

The three of them stopped. It wasn't just the port. The aliens of the second war were laying siege to the entire city.


	8. Night Terrors 3

[5]

There were two buildings beside the gate: another red administrative building and another storage building. This one was three stories rather than two.

A single Calcinite appeared from the gate.

Rita knew immediately that it was different. For one, its claws were already out, but that wasn't too strange. Its boots were also gone, and in their place was a pair of clawed feet. That wasn't _that_ strange either.

What was strange was the shape in the visor. It was deep red and not crystal-clear, not at all how the others had been. Its color was probably closer to solidified jelly, but Rita, of course, thought of frozen blood.

Before Rita or Kelso had a chance to level their weapons. The whole diving suit of the Calcinite split apart, sounding very much like a grenade going off. The diving suit split open, and out popped the alien goo.

Kelso and Rita fired, backing up. Kelso was on Rita's right, but he was ushering her left. Though she didn't know (and wouldn't have cared if she _had _known) Jack Kelso was moving them toward one of the cargo buildings.

The goo started to rise up from the grown like baking bread. For a short moment light winked too brightly off a spot on the Calcinite blob. _A nucleus. _Rita thought. _A computer chip or something like that._

She'd played Ocarina of Time (an old game, but a good one), and remembered the boss for the Water Temple had been like that. What an asshole that'd been. The temple itself…not the boss.

The claws reformed on the goo, and the upper body stretched forward. Legs appeared on both sides of the goo, thick and with broad feet. The hind quarters of the Calcinite separated from the ground. It was mobile and on all fours.

"Rita!" Kelso yelled. "Come on! This way!"

Now he was nearly dragging her toward the building.

The thing was on all fours now, and it started forward. The hands came down on the ground with only the nails. They were so long the pads of its hands were actually suspended nearly a foot above the ground. They made a dry whispering sound on the concrete.

Behind them, Gibbs stumbled and nearly fell.

"How fuck are you tripping on a_ flat surface!_" Rita shouted at him. She sounded like a scared mother lecturing her wayward son.

"I'm sorry!" Gibbs answered, spittle falling out of his mouth. "I didn't—"

"If you trip then dear God in heaven, I'll kill you myself you worthless fucking _cock knocker_!"

Kelso kicked open the door. Rita dragged in Gibbs, and they closed the door behind them. They searched out for something to block the door with. They didn't have to look far. There was a table in the middle of the small room. Kelso put his laser pistol on it, and began pushing it towards the door.

"Get out of the way dumbass!" Rita yelled, at Gibbs. Gibbs nearly jumped out of his shoes. He walked over to the far corner and sat down, his face covered with his shackled hands.

Rita helped Kelso get the table in front of the door.

"That's that." Kelso said, whipping the sweat off his forehead with an equally sweaty hand.

"No windows, either." Rita said. "Thank God."

Gibbs spoke from the corner. "What about this door over here?"

The two officers turned around. Sure enough, there was a steel-colored door on the adjacent wall, near where Gibbs was sitting. It was ajar, but only barely. It unnerved Rita just the same.

She looked at Kelso, and his eyes widened.

"We have to." she said.

For a moment, she thought he would refuse. Then he shrugged his shoulders. "I know we do—secure the perimeter and everything—but I don't like it."

As she stepped to the door, Gibbs spoke up again. "Could you guys lemme out of these cuffs?"  
"No." Rita said shortly.

"It's not like I'm going anywhere!" he cried. "Not with those fucking Bouncers outside."

"That's such an old ass game." Rita said, shaking her head. "Fucking _ancient_, and the answer is still no."

Gibbs turned to Kelso. "Kelso! Make her let me go!"

Kelso gave Gibbs a _what do you expect me to say _look.

"I'm not gonna run away for _Christ sake_!" Gibbs shouted. "I'm not gonna shoot you either. You're the only things between me and the aliens. Just let me out!"

"Shut up before I shut you up." Rita warned. "You better believe I'm serious."

Looking at her, Peter Gibbons did. He shut up.

"We might need him." Kelso said. His hand was on the doorknob to the new room.

But she didn't listen to him. She didn't _want_ to listen. She wanted to go home and listen to the Mauve Avengers. She wanted to listen to Roy Madison sing about how the Egyptian Cartel governments had twelve nukes to their name—twelve nukes too many. She wanted to listen to Alvin and the Chipmunks, sing their victory song at the end of Meet the Wolfman: "_Everything's…gonna be alright!"_

Kelso looked at her, concerned. "You alright?"

"Yeah." she said breathlessly. "Of course."

She wasn't, of course…but then again none of them were "alright."

"Let's just move on." she said.

Kelso turned the knob and opened the door. It led to a small L-shaped room, nearly a hallway. Kelso poked his head through, then inched his way in. Rita followed close by, and as she got a good look at the room, her heart sank.

The wall adjacent to the door had a flight of stairs leading up. The rest of the hallway was quite bare, save for the large sliding door at the end of the hallway, which probably led to a garage of sorts.

But none of that was the problem. The problem (or problems you could say) where the damn windows. There were eight of the fucking things: three on the wall on their right, five more splayed across the wall across from them. They weren't especially large windows…but they didn't have to be. The aliens outside would be able to see them and plug them.

Behind the stairs was another door (shit!).

But upstairs…

If they made it to the very top floor, they'd have a defensive advantage. The aliens would have to come through the stairs—they would _only _be able to come through the stairs. Then _they _would be the sitting ducks, the gasping fish in the great barrel of life.

Rita and Kelso dashed for the stairs, Rita went first, aiming high. At the top of the steps, in front of Rita, was another flight of steps. This set went up and to the left, on to the third floor. There was some light source up there, sending out a crooked yellow rectangle. As she watched, a shadow happened across it.

"Kelso." she whispered. "Bad guy up there."

Kelso ascended the steps and he was behind her now. "How many?"

She opened her mouth to answer—and then there was a strange chirping sound. Rita had time to think, _Why are there canaries in a cargo building? _Then there was a great terrible spray of something (she knew what it was) and the backside of her armor was coated.

She would've gotten shot soon after if not for her own god-like reflexes. Rita spun quickly, opening fire even before she had completely turned around. The first laser shot shattered a window on the second floor. The second shot put a smoking crater in the piece of wall next to that window.

The third shot went into the corner where the alien was hiding. It was another small bluish green one, and for a bare instant Rita thought she'd aimed too high. The alien's head was scraped away, as if with a rake. The corner it was standing in was suddenly coated with orange. The alien fell over, mewling its high-pitched mewl.

Rita stared at what was left of it. Then Peter Gibbons brought her back to the real world.  
He was standing in the middle of the stairs. His eyes wide and pointing down. Pointing at Kelso "Fuck! What the fuck happened?!"

Kelso was lying at her feet. His right hand had dropped the pistol, and the weapon had somehow bounced right, so that it was lying near to the popped window. Kelso was not moving, and would not move ever again.

"Oh God." Gibbs sobbed. "Oh my friggin' God!"

Kelso's left arm was missing.  
"No." Rita's voice was a world away. "No, please no."

She turned away from him, and staggered toward the stairs. Her legs felt like rubber. Her knees felt like they would unhinge and buckle at every step.

She ascended the steps, and at one points she seemed to tilt too far to one side and the world swam away from her. Gibbs screamed her name, but she blinked and somehow she'd made it to the top of the stairs.

Rita turned and, yes, there was a alien on this floor too. It was doing an odd thing: poking through the cargo as if looking for something. She thought she could even hear a loud sniffing noise.

The alien turned, and saw her; it fumbled for its gun, which for some reason had been placed in its purple belt.

Rita's rifle seemed to aim of its own accord. The alien reached out with its left arm, its gun drawn. There was a bright flash of red light and then the alien's arm wasn't there anymore. The green Sectoid (that's what those things from the first alien war were called) screamed girlishly. The alien jerked backwards. The force of the shot sent it into a spin. It smacked face first into a pile of steel crates that had somehow been stacked on top of one another, and there was a sickening sound of bones crunching.

But that wasn't it.

Rita kept firing. The world was bathed in red light. The alien's bucked and jerked, a hilarious dance routine. It managed to reach out with its right hand and not even a second later, _that _hand was also flipping uselessly through the air.

The laser rifle didn't stop firing until the overheat failsafe activated. Rita had somehow fired thirty-five shots in less than five seconds.

There was little trace that an alien had been in front of her.

Five seconds passed.

Then ten.

She realized that she'd been holding her breath. She exhaled and the tears came out in a brutal, sickening flood. Her legs buckled. The rifle fell away, landing smartly on its exposed sink.

Rita cried.

Gibbs wanted to comfort her, but he was afraid.

They had only been in the port for thirty-five minutes, he thought. Maybe even less than that.


	9. Night Terrors conclusion

Night Terrors conclusion

[1]

Peter Gibbons was afraid. He'd been afraid plenty of times in his life, but nothing quite as bad as this.

When he saw Officer Kelso get taken out, he thought _We've screwed. That's it. Do not past go. Do not collect one hundred dollars. Do not beg for mercy. We're done_.

He heard a strange sound. It was the whispers. The machinery of the port was watching them. Talking about them.

Laughing at them.

He tried not to think about that.

The female officer, Rita, had gone up the stairs. There had been gunfire. No alien gunfire…at least Gibbs didn't think so. Still, it seemed like an eternity before Rita came down the stairs. Her steps were heavy, ominous ones—and he thought for one second of crippling fear that he'd see the _alien _coming down the stairs, alien gun in one hand and Rita's laser rifle in the other.

But no…it was just Rita. She looked blankly around the room. In full view, Gibbs noticed, of some of the windows.

"We gotta go back up." he said to Rita.

Rita did not answer. She turned to face him. She was terrible to look at. Her armor uniform had mostly been soaked on the back with Kelso's blood, but he could see it on her front to.

But her eyes. They were red and bloodshot. She was crying but only a little. Her brown nose flared.  
She fidgeted with the laser rifle. For one terrible moment, Gibbs thought she would aim it at him.

Then Rita wiped her face with one arm, and she looked somewhat normal again.

"Please," Gibbs said. "I need you to take these things offa me."  
"Fuck you." Rita said quietly.

"We don't have time for this!" Gibbs shouted. He hated to cry, and he was crying now. This dippy cunt was going to get the both of them killed! Couldn't she see that? She wasn't even ushering him towards the flight of stairs leading to the third door. She was standing here doing fuck all!

The whispers...

They were getting closer.

"C'mon lady!"

She took him by the shoulder. He thought she would slam him onto the ground or something like that. He'd read up on plenty stories of police brutality. It was always when they got their feathers ruffled over not having their orders obeyed. Put out your cigarette lady, or a shot from the TASER for you. What's that, sir? You can't breathe from my choke-hold? You're dead now? You should've thought of that beforehand.

If just normal circumstances made the cops act that way, God only knew how this chick would act. She'd been aggressive from the start, and now her partner was dead. If she shot him now, out of "fear," none of the other jackboots would say anything.  
"Let me out!" he cried. "Please!"

She bent back towards Kelso. Then she looked up at Gibbs. She was pretty, he had to give her that.

She got a pair of alloy shears out of her belt, and had him turn around. He did so fearfully, thinking he would see aliens at the foot of the stairs. He saw nothing of the sort.

The shears cut the cuffs apart with a satisfying popping. Gibbs immediately started rubbing his wrists together. They hadn't seemed that tight on his wrists when they'd first put the things on, but for the past five minutes or so they'd burned. Not quite as bad as putting your hands on an oven, but close.

"Now what?" he asked, though it was stupid question in hindsight.  
Rita waved a hand in the direction of the stairs leading to the third floor.  
Gibbs looked at the laser pistol on the floor. "I've gotta take his gun Rita."

Rita finally spoke. He expected her to explode at him, either in anger or in tears. But certainly not the eerily calm voice that he was hearing now.

"Whatever." she said.

"Okay." He reached for the gun. There was blood on the gun. He only managed to grab it by mentally screaming at himself to do so. As soon as his hand was around it, he heard its whispers and it was not loud, but it was a _huge _sound, like the sound of an ocean racing towards him. The gun laughed merrily in his hands.

_(how are you feeling Mr. Gibbons)_

Gibbs told the laser pistol he was feeling decent, all things considered. He'd been arrested for possession of drugs and he'd thought the occasion would be the lowest point of his life. Right now, it was runner-up, though it might appeal the decision at a future location.

_(and the young miss how is she feeling)_

Gibbs said that she was doing quite poorly.

The gun laughed at that. It wasn't funny to Gibbs, but he wasn't surprised.

The gun felt warm and heavy in his hands. It knew that its ultimate duty was a grave one: the slaying of others.

And these aliens were definitely an _other_.

"C'mon." Rita said, and gestured toward the third floor again. She seemed stronger now, both in the voice and in the gesture. She was maybe pulling herself together, and that was good, because he was just barely together himself…if that.

"You know how to hold that gun?"

They ascended the steps, Rita leading the way. He wouldn't be nearly as effective in close quarters as Kelso. His aim was shitter than Kelso's…but his reflexes might not be. Neither Kelso nor Rita could.

There were no other aliens on the third floor.

"We just have to hold out." Rita stated. She barely sounded like she believed it herself.

"For how long?" he asked.

She opened her mouth to answer, then there was another explosion off in the distance. The two of them both jumped at the sound, and Gibbs aimed the laser pistol in the direction of one of the windows where sudden orange light had flashed.

"Jesus Christ." Gibbs whispered, though he wasn't much of a Christian.

"We should move some of these boxes to block the stairs." Rita said, and the two of them walked over to the closest pile. She really didn't know how they had managed to stack this large crates on top of one another, but the only thing she needed to worry about was the crate on the floor.

"Cover the door." She said to Gibbs. He looked at her momentarily confused. "Watch it I mean."

He aimed towards it with the pistol.

Rita put her rifle on the ground, and put her hands on both sides of the crate. She tried shaking it, but it would not move an inch.

"Damn it." Rita gasped. "Thing weighs a ton."

"You want me to do it."

Rita very much doubted he would be able to move it if she wasn't. Sure enough, he was a pathetic failure, his pale-white face turning momentarily red. It was almost funny.

"Alright, that's enough."

Rita had him stand up and pick up Kelso's pistol from the floor.

"We just gotta watch the stairs then." Gibbs huffed. He was thin, but not in great shape, and his hands hadn't helped the task any. They were soaked—wetter than all the oceans combined.

"We hear footsteps…we'll call out to them."

"Call out?" Gibbs asked. "Why the fuck would be do something like that."

Rita's frightened face set hard. "You do what I say buster…or I'll fuck you up."

"Alright." Gibbs said. He nearly rolled his eyes. Nearly.

"We have to give them a chance to ID themselves. If they speak…whatever it is aliens speak, then we shoot them. If they don't say anything…it's 'cause they are aliens, and we shoot them."

Gibbs nodded. Scared as he was, that made plenty of sense. He didn't want to pop any human. Not even a jackboot. Well, he wouldn't mind shooting a jackboot, but he would rather he didn't.

"You copy? Huh?" Rita asked.

"Yeah, I copy." Gibbs said. "I can't wait for this to be over. Then I can go to jail."

Rita's grin was a horrible parody of a smile. In other circumstances she might've looked like she was passing a gallstone (could woman even do that?). It didn't matter to Gibbs. Right now, he thought she looked like the most beautiful woman on the planet. He didn't want to kiss. Her. He had never ever wanted to kiss anyone and thought he never would.

But Rita Mendoza came close.

Very close.  
"Yeah you can go to jail." Rita said. She looked like she was going to say something after that. Then thought better of it.

That's when the footsteps came.

[2]

Not many of them. Only three at the very most. They came from directly below Rita and Gibbs.

And Gibbs could hear the whispers.

_(I always wanted to know)_

His gun tightened on the laser gun. It was whispering too. Merrily so. But the alien gun's were loud. Oh, dear sweat God where they loud.

_(how I would go)_

"Hello?" Rita said. No answer. "Get ready buster." She said to Gibbs.

Gibbs nodded soundlessly.

_(tell me friend)_

They were starting up the steps now. The footsteps were loud and booming but the whispers made it seem like they were coming from a distance. Like cannon fire.

_(how I meet my end)_

A single head poke out from the stairs. It was a bulbous and green head. The head of an alien. It turned its head to the right first, seeing nothing but an empty and dark corner.

Then it turned left and its already wide eyes seemed to bug out like a cartoon character that just realized he was standing on nothing but air.

"Shoot 'em!" Rita yelled. The two off them opened up.

The dark room was bathed in red light. Gibb's first shot missed by over two feet, scorching the far wall. His second shot glanced the green Sectoid's arm.

Rita, of course, was on point. Both her blasts struck the alien in the neck. It's recoiled, the back of its head smacking against the edge of the floor. Its legs gave out from under it, and it began tumbling down the stairs, screaming on the way down.

The second alien coming up the stairs got a few shots off. Instead of pausing near the top of the stairs to poke its head out, the bastard ran up into the room and rushed at them. It was carrying an alien pistol. Red markings glowed on it, its eyes angry red circles.

_(TELL ME FRIEND)_

It fired off two, no, three quick rounds.

_(HOW I MEET MY END)_

Both missed Rita by inches. She blinked and turned her head away, firing at the same time. Her shots ripped off a large section of the far wall.

Gibbs fired wildly with the pistol, perhaps a dozen shots. Only one hit, but that was all that was needed. The green Sectoid was struck in the leg, it pitched forward…as if it'd stubbed its toe on a dumbbell someone had left on the ground. The turquoise colored pistol went flying out of its grip. It fell somewhere behind them.

It slid for about two feet, where it came to a rest in front of Rita. It was braced its hands on the ground, trying to get up. Rita blasted holes into it. It writhed and flopped on the ground as if lit up with a TASER.

"Let's get behind these boxes." Rita said. "We shoulda done that before, I think."

"We won't be able to cover the door." Gibbs said.

"Never mind that. Cover's more important. If we get hit by one of these shots, it's all over but the crying."

Rita looked like she was close to crying, but Gibbs knew she would not. The two of them were fresh out of tears. They moved around the large box pile in the center of the room. Gibbs' side had higher boxes for more cover, but Rita's side had a better angle on the stairs.

Gibbs looked around this back half of the attic, which wasn't that much darker than the rest of the building. The heat sinks of their guns gave off even more light and Gibbs was able to spy the alien pistol

_(hi Mr. Gibbs I see you shot my master)_

on Rita's side of the room.

Gibbs said that, yes indeed, he shot the gun's master.

The alien gun laughed at that. Rita's rifle and Kelso's pistol also laughed. It was like he'd told the funniest joke in the world.

The final pair of footsteps were coming. These ones were slightly more cautious than the ones beforehand, but the alien did not come into the room; it popped up over the floor's edge, and there was not a pistol or a gun in its hands but a blue ball (Kelso might've joked at that).

The alien's marking flashed red and now the red stripe around the ball was glowing red as well.

The alien grinned, and the grenade was singing Bob Dylan, and so was the alien's markings.

_(the answer my friends is blowin' in the wind the answer is blowin' in the wind)_

Gibbs and Rita opened fired. Rita's shot smashed into the alien's shoulder. Gibbs shots missed entirely, but that didn't matter. the grenade dropped below the floor's edge, out of sight. There was no way to know if it touched the stairs or the second floor. Either way it didn't matter.

Gibbs covered his ears with his hands and shut his eyes. The grenade got off one more line about how the answer was blowing in the wind, and then the world seemed to explode.

The floor shook, and his unsteady legs gave out from under him; he landed on his ass. He shut his eyes so tightly they began to hurt, but even _then_ he could feel warm light between the cracks.

The sound rang in his ears and there was no sound at all but the ringing in his ears. He couldn't even hear the whispers now, and a strange smile went across his face.

_I can't hear them! Maybe the alien grenade knocked their voices out of my head._

But he knew that they probably had not. He'd heard technology (switched _on _technology, which was why the lights weren't speaking to him now) since he turned thirteen. That was just the facts of it, and he would hear machines and computers talking to him until either he was dead or there was no tech left on the planet to listen to.

He eventually opened his eyes. Looked around, his body feeling strangely numb.

The pile of crates they'd been hiding behind seemed like they were undamaged. The one on top was leaning dangerously toward him. He scooted back, out from under it.

"Rita?" he whispered.

"Right here Gibbs." she said.

He spun around, certain that she'd have a length of metal through her chest or her stomach. But no, she was fine. Not even the metal box she'd been hiding behind was damaged. Like Gibbs, she'd been knocked into a sitting position. The room was covered in smoke, and he had to squint to see her.

"You good?"

"Yeah, I guess so." She started standing up.

Gibbs breathed a sigh of relief that sounded almost like a sob.

"I guess we gotta look at the damage huh?" Rita asked, wiping her mouth.

"Yeah sure boss, whatever you say." Gibbs had never called anyone "boss" in his entire life.

The two of them went around their sides of the crate pile. They were both greeted by a wall of rising smoke. It stretched from the left side of the room to the right.

"Shit." Gibbs muttered. "I think we started a fire."

But they did not, though he had no way of knowing so at the time. The grenade was yet another alien weapon, a pulser, and the sonic energy could no more make a fire than it could dance the tango. The "smoke" was really the dust of matter that had literally been shaken apart, and it was already clearing as the ceiling had split apart.

Cool air hit their sweating foreheads and the feeling was good—great even. Gibbs smiled up at the moon, visible in the ceiling's hole. It was a fearful smile, one still sick with growing hope. It was the last time he would ever smile.

_All we gotta do is hold out,_ he thought, and his smile widened. _We can do this, our lasers don't need ammo. It won't be like those people stranded in the Silent Road over in Egypt. We won't have to run out and scavenge enemy weapons…not that we _could _use the alien guns anyway._

_(what a day) _the laser pistol said.

_(what a lovely day) _Rita's laser rifle said.

Gibbs told them that it wasn't a lovely day. Not at all, but at the very least he was still alive. Damn, if only Kelso hadn't died—

The guns laughed at that. But for Rita and Gibbs, the laughter was over. _Far_ over.

[3]

The Calcinites came. All of them. They came out of the smoke. They came with their claws already popped out of their gloves, shining gravely with moonlight, their liquid contents sloshing thickly in their dive helmets, and their bodies whispered too. Their chips whispered, and Gibbs knew they _did _have a chip. It was somewhere in their helmets, sloshing around with the rest of it. Of course, he couldn't see it, but he FELT the chips, like bits of burning charcoal in the dark. They could hear the _click click _of more Calcinites climbing up the walls.

_That's what doom sounds like, _Gibbs thought…and the thought seemed to tremble through his numb body. Giving it feeling, if only for a brief moment.

Gibbs and Rita raised their lasers, which cackled, and Gibbs—for a second—was able to catch everything.

Nearly everything. And they spoke all together and their voice was HUGE. It was the sound of untold eons and

(_SIR PETER IS THAT YOU)_

Images slammed into his head.

_(SIR PETER SIR PETER WENT OUT FOR A STROLL)_

Images he could not identify…or would not. He saw immense bases (colonies? expansion?) in the dark depths of the ocean. Darkened at first, and then coming alight. Each room, one at a time, always starting in the middle.

_(SIR PETER SIR PETER GOT PUT IN A CAGE IN A HOLE)_

These bases on the seabed were beautiful things. They stretched across the watery bed for kilometers. They were fashioned in gold and in exotic alien minerals and

_(SIR PETER SIR PETER PUT IN A CAGE HE HAS TO HOLD IT IN) _

he saw aliens—green Sectoids, and lobster creatures, and lizard creatures with razor-sharp teeth—lying in semi-organic pods. And as the rooms turned on, one at a time, he saw the pods split open, the aliens tearing themselves from a slimy film and into open water.

_(SIR PETER SIR PETER HAS TO GO RIGHT NOW)_

He saw strange devices on the lower levels of these beautiful things. A pedestal upon which a pair of rotating rings circled above. It was foreign to Gibbs and so completely familiar.

_(HE DOESN'T WANT TO SIN_)

Gibbs was driven to his knees. Blood gushed from his mouth, from his ears. It soaked his eyes and turned everything into a red film. And yet he could still hear the machines talking. He could sense the green Sectoids on what remained of the second floor. They were pointed their guns up at the third floor, and had decided not to fire. The Calcinites would take care of everything, anyways.

Gibbs himself hadn't fired a single shot at the Calcinites, and in fact the laser pistol fell to the floor in front of him. It laughed uproariously, and two seconds later was crushed under the foot of a Calcinite, silenced forever.

"Gibbs!" Rita cried out. She fired at the crowd of Calcinites, not bothering to aim, knowing it wouldn't matter. She took down three of them. Then a Calcinite whacked the rifle with its claw. It flew out of her hands, a long fissure traveling from the barrel nearly to the butt of the gun. When it hit the wall, it came apart completely.

Rita pulled out her spare laser pistol, started firing without backing up (she couldn't anyways…she was already at the wall). The Calcinite's claw swung back around, in a backhand. It nonetheless shredded Rita's right hand. It looked like meat stuffed into a grinder. She stared at her hand, shrieking, and sat down on the floor.

She stopped screaming almost as soon as she was on the ground. Her terror had blossomed and mutated so that it didn't even seem like terror anyway.

She knew she was going to die. Knowing it made her feel almost _happy. _

Gibbs shook his head. There was no feeling left in his body. He sensed the digital, mechanical

_(mechanical control)_

workings of the alien beasts. He saw in his mind's eye, every single one of them with a switch no different—completely the same really—as the light switches in his own house. All of them were turned up.

He reached out, with an invisible hand. A mind-hand. He turned it to the Calcinite in front of Rita, found the switch (it buzzed amiably in his bleeding ears) and firmly thumbed it down.

The Calcinite toppled down like ragdoll.

_Why can I do this now? _ Peter Gibbons thought, maybe this was a residual effect. They've given him a big blast of their thoughts. Now it was _his _turn.

The Calcinites started dropping one by one. One of them cracked its dive helmet on the floor, and its contents oozed out like strawberry preservatives.

The green Sectoids downstairs new something was wrong. Now they were shooting up into the ceiling. One off the Calcinites already down was popped, and did a frantic "The Worm" that might've made Gibbs laugh if he could move his mouth.

He turned his mind's hand—his mechanical control hand—towards the green Sectoids

(aquatoids)

below them and the jammed their wiring. They all started doing what his mother would call "wigging out" and they fired in panicked shots. There was a scream as they began hitting one another, the guns firing and aiming almost of their own accord. Their own guns laughed as they fired. They laughed like it was the biggest joke in the world. Maybe it even was.

Soon, there was nothing below them but the whispering of the guns. There were a few stragglers, and Gibbs turned them off. It was like blowing out a candle from a distance.

There was a ship coming. It was coming into the east, and Gibbs blinked his attention toward it. It was a human ship, a transport ship. In its belly it contained troopers with human weapons. Lying on the ground, in a growing pool of his own blood, Gibbs smiled.

"Here come the Enforcers." Gibbs muttered softly, quoting Swat Kats. "Late as usual."

"What?" Rita said. She'd seen what was happening to the aliens and had lost the ability to speak. She found it now. She looked very old. She still looked beautiful. "What are you saying."

But the thief Peter Gibbons, a skinny white boy with a red jacket had already closed his eyes.

**AN: Finally this section is done. Sorry about straying away from water combat but this will be the last time I do it in this story. Night Terrors perhaps could've been a separate story all by itself, but maybe not since the previous chapter are already part of Enemy Below**

**The next chapters will take us back into the ocean, with aquanauts (or Divers as I call them) with aqua plastic armor and gauss weapons. **


	10. Break Time

Break Time

**AN: Just a little something to tide over anyone reading this story (all two of you =D). I've been busy. I've got a part-time job at Kroger, and I might get another at the local library. Of course, in the meantime, I've been writing tons of other things. Things that aren't Fan Fiction, so they can't go here.**

**But screw that, let's get into it.**

[1]

Rita woke with a scream. She screamed so loudly and for so long that her throat became raw. She screamed until her eyes began to burn from looking at the cold light of the fluorescent bulbs above. Tears flooded her eyes, making them burn even more—and all the world was a soaked blurry mess.

_A soaked mess, _like what Jack Kelso had winded up as in the end. Kelso, a practicing Methodist, in a country that had been becoming less religious on and on for the past hundred years (only _half _the country was Christian nowadays).

_Not that it helped him much, _Rita Mendoza thought…and kept right on screaming.

In an instant, hands were upon her. Large faces loomed above her. Faces with sunken eyes and blank expressions on their mouths. They wore white coats and Rita had time to think (_I've joined the funny farm_) before her sleeve was curled up. A narrow line of reflecting light appeared in the air in front of her: a syringe. The doctor holding it was short and stout.

_(there is his handle…there is his spout!)_

Hands bound her left and right arm. She struggled against them. Not knowing why. Only that she hated them. She hated everything.

"Calm down Ms. Mendoza." The stout doctor said. His eyes were patient. Maddeningly patient. She wanted to take one of her fists and smash it into that calm face.

The doctor put his free hand on the arm and squeezed. A vein—faded blue—appeared on Rita's arm.

Her hands twisted inside the hard grips of the orderlies. She bucked and bounced on the bed she was on. They hadn't strapped her down to the bed. Hadn't felt it necessary, they said.

A thin stream of medicine spurted out of the needle. As it went through the air, Rita thought it looked vaguely purple. Wasn't that funny?

The doctor spoke again, and his voice was slow and deliberate. It was the voice of a surgeon. "I recommend you stop struggling miss."

Rita's wrestling and tussling with the orderlies slowed down, but only a little. The guy on her left was a giant of a man. His grip on her left arm was light. The woman holding Rita's right arm had it in a death grip. She was grimacing at Rita, shouting at her to remain compliant. A regular Napoleon. Just like Rita herself.

"Fucking amateurs!" Rita spat at them. At all of them. "Squeezing my arm?! You don't even have a fucking tourniquet? Not even a damn piece of rubber fucking hose?!"

Rita laughed bitterly at that. Then she began to cry. It was a terrible, pitiable sound. She hated it. She stopped wrestling with the orderlies.

"Be easy lady." The giant said. "Calm down, I mean."

Rita didn't say anything. She felt the groping pinch of the needle.

Then she was riding the darkness again.

[2]

February 1st

[The following are scores from the Battle Zone under the living quarters. Only the scores of active XCOM Divers (neither missing nor confirmed dead) are listed].

Ranked First—Commander Laura Dreyfus

Battle Zone kills: 40.

Stats (out of 100):

Firing Accuracy: 71

Throwing Accuracy: 53

Stamina: 56

Strength: 34

Reactions: 60  
Alien kills: 16

Ranked Second—Lieutenant Rachel Henderson

Battle Zone kills: 19

Firing Accuracy: 77

Throwing Accuracy: 33

Stamina: 50

Strength: 24

Reactions: 55

Alien kills: 11

Ranked Third—Lieutenant Tanya Olsen

Battle Zone kills: 26

Firing Accuracy: 59

Throwing accuracy: 75

Stamina: 64  
Strength: 67

Reactions: 20

Alien kills: 7

[a bit farther down the list…]

Ranked Eighth—Able Seaman Claude Dreyfus

Battle Zone kills: 6

Firing Accuracy: 58

Throwing Accuracy: 63

Stamina: 70

Strength: 30

Reactions: 74

Alien kills: 8

[near the bottom of the Zone's rank list…]

Seaman Haru Ichiro…

[and below him…]

Seaman Phil Burnell…

[3]

"Interesting stats." said Hugo Urien.

"You're damn tootin'." Kenny Derringer said beside him.

"Do people still say that?"

"You're damn tootin'." Kenny said again.

The two of them were treading at the southern edge of the Battle Zone. The screen where they are looking is on the southern wall. They two of them were facing away from the action because of this, but it was really nothing the two of them hadn't seen before. Occasionally, Kenny turned to the center of the Zone, where Divers were using the typical gas tech XCOM had been regulated to for the past month. Instead of hard, armor-piercing tips, the tips were hollowed out and filled with water-resistant red paint. As Kenny watched, a newbie Diver (or a n00b, as Hugo might've called them) was hit with a paint-round and sent into the wall between the battle-area of the zone and the audience-area. The loud gunshot-sound, made Hugo jump.

"Shit! Scared the crap out of me."

"What the fuck!" the newbie Diver cried out. "That was bullshit!"

"What was bullshit?!" cried out one of the Divers on the green team. "That you weren't paying attention or that someone had to nerve to hit you for it?"

"I was _so _paying attention." Seaman Phil Burnell said. He wiped away he paint with one hand and placed his other one on the glass wall between him and the Divers Hugo and Kenny. Phil did this to show that he was "out."

Tanya Olsen, green team's leader, came swimming up to him. She looked and sounded pissed. She got up in Phil's face. "No you weren't."

"It's hard to dodge the fucking shots when literally _every _single other person on the enemy team wants to fire at me and just _me!_" Phil shouted.

"That's fucking _bullshit_ and you know it." Tanya Olsen said, shoving Phil. Shoving him _hard_. Phil's back smashed against the glass wall.

"Shit! My back!" Phil cried and, sweet Jesus, he _was _crying. Bawling like a baby freshly spanked by the doctor that helped birth him. "My back I think you broke it."

He said this as he swam to the sliding metal door that led out.

Tanya started to swim after than him. Then thought better of it. "Get the _fuck _out of here for I break the _rest _of you, _bitch_!"

Kenny rolled back in the water, as though an invisible chair had given out from under him. He put his hands and his belly and _gushed _laughter. Hugo watched his friend as he flipped through the water.

"Stop that you ass!" Hugo said, but he was laughing himself. He was clutching his _own_ damn sides. Phil Burnell had had plenty of shit to say during bed time in the living quarters (shit about women being in the top three spots on the Zone's rank list). But during all the times he'd been in close proximity to them, he'd been oddly quiet.

"Are you two idiots done?" Tanya Olsen said.

"Are you?" Hugo asked, before he could help it. Bad move, Hugo. She outranked him; that was one thing. The other? She could beat the both of them half to death right now—even in the water—and looked mad enough to do it.

Tanya swam around to the metal door.

Kenny said. "Oh fuck it. We should run."

It was already too late. Tanya had already swum around to their side of the wall.

"What is it?" Hugo said. He sounded afraid. That's because he was.

But Tanya only threw her training rifle at him (they were orange rather than the bright "caution" yellow of most of the other gas weapons). He caught it awkwardly, by the muzzle, and it was inverted in his hands.  
"Let's get started." Tanya said. "There's still plenty of work to do."


	11. Pt 2: Ch 7--Improvements

Improvements

[1]

They were starting to have a bit more success.

All of them.

[2]

On the sixth of February another survey ship landed off the coast of Miami. There were worries that this ship would have a new kind of alien on it. It did not, but the two Gillmen on the ship did put up a bit of a fight. They didn't come barreling out of the scouting sub, sonic guns blazing. That was something the aliens of the first alien war might do. Instead, they camped out in their own craft—presumably with their guns both aimed at the door; and when Seaman Phil Burnell opened the door he got both the best and worse surprise of his life.

Both aliens fired. There was probably no more than fifteen feet between Seaman Phil and the aliens, but only one of them actually managed to hit…and the hit was a glancing blow. Phil was sent spinning away from the double doors. A thin cloud of blood was leaking out of his suit.

Green sonic blasts continued to pour out of the alien sub. They were light and chirping: sonic pistols, which made sense considering the role of the sub. Most of them went wild and handsome into the blue depths behind the assault team. A handful smashed into flat seabed. Two—well…more than _two_—cut very close to Phil as he was tumbling through the water.

He was being backed up by Claude Dreyfus and Haru Ichiro, who had been the only survivor of the failed assault on the alien cruiser. There were only three other Divers on this mission. They were clearing out the reef to the north. The reef would turn out to have nothing more deadly than a tin of Anacin that had been loaded down with rocks for some reason. Hugo, who had found it, said "Kind of a 2020s drug isn't it?"

That earned him a slap from Rachel Henderson.

At around the same time he was being slapped, Haru and Claude were opening fire with their guns. Sacred Tear had not yet fully transitioned over to Gauss technology. The gauss rifles were done, but now the technicians needed to make the ammo.

To that end, the Divers on this mission were carrying a mixture of both gauss and gas technology. Haru and Claude were armed with gauss pistols. The technicians and instructors ordered the Divers to treat the gun as a submachinegun. It wasn't that accurate—not at all—but it could be fired quickly.

The two Divers took that advice to heart. They each took a corner of the door, and fired around it. Gauss weapons made a queer sound: instead of a bang, the guns sounded like some metal gear was being worked into place on some machine. In the space of

The gas technology had issues with stopping power. These gauss rounds did not. The gillmen bucked and sunfished. Their bodies shook like they had a pair of tits they wanted to shake. The hard, aqua plastic wall behind them was suddenly splashed brilliantly with blood. It spread out in a grotesque fan. Their mouths opened in screams, and at least one of them managed to do it before the alien's head was ripped from its shoulders. The second one crumpled up on itself, like it was trying to make itself into a ball.

At last, it was over. The gauss weapons oozed a thin fluid that wasn't too much like ink, but it really _was _too much like ink.

"Holy shit." Haru said, his voice shaking and happy. "I think we got them."

Claude turned to his friend, an eighteen year old kid, and thought _God he looks so old. He looks ancient. He looks like he's seen so many things that he wished he hadn't._

But how else should Haru look? Claud was feeling much the same way.

He began to radio the others. While he was doing so, he made sure to turn away from sub's open doors, as well as his friend's haunted face.

[3]

Captain Joe Vargas was pleased with today's report. None of the missions had been completed without at least one death. Phil Burnell would need a new hip bone, but that was a light-hearted turn when you considered previous victims of sonic weapons had had their bodies stitched together by the doctors before funeral service. Assuming they were able to obtain both halves in the first place.

The report said practically Zrbite though. That was most unfortunate but not surprising. The survey subs and escort subs (those things were turning out to be nasty fighters) had none to little Zrbite, respectively. That was fine. That would come with time. With successful missions.

Captain Vargas was more worried about the United States. The terror attack on Auto City had been thwarted, but at significant cost. Of the 140 police officers, 90 had been killed. A third of the civilian population had been wiped out. The US National Guard came in. Sixty of the two hundred deployed in the fight got killed. The Guard of New Mexico might have come, but President Douglas, a Republican, said the government would have to go to the US Navy and Coast Guard. To which President Belisma, in a speech, subtly reminded the US that New Mexico had a sizable navy of its own.

Vargas cocked his head up, leaning back in his chair.

Things were getting bad…and would only be getting worse. In the first alien war, the aliens had managed to infiltrate many countries at the highest level: including China, the States, and much of Europe. For all practically purposes, they had lost the war.

Or they would have if the engineers hadn't completed the Avenger two days before hand. By the time they'd sent forces to shut down the project, the final team was already on Cydonia carrying out their assault. Then Otto Zander had shot the alien brain. He'd shot it until it exploded like a plastic explosive.

On planet Earth, the UFOs plummeted to the ground. A few city were unfortunate enough to be below a UFO when that happened. Detroit, New York, Austin, Cambridge, Madrid, Johannesburg, Beijinn, St. Petersburg, Berlin. All of these cities were still being rebuilt. There was no point in even going over the casualties.

The aliens on the ground died as well. The Ethereals went first. They had the only real bond to the alien brain; the other aliens were bonded to the Ethereals, effectively setting up a domino chain. It saved the life of many humans. For some it doomed them to die.

One such human was Eris Wilson. She'd been hooked up to an Abductor's exam table. Said UFO had crashed in the Arctic. People later theorized that it'd been going from Canada—where her Abduction had been reported—to northern Europe. It had crashed without exploding and Eris Wilson's body—along with the bodies of a dozen other Canadians—had been remarkably well preserved. Wilson's grieving parents had been somewhat eased by that. Captain Vargas sympathized with them.

"Where are you God?" he asked the ceiling. "Are you even out there?"

If he was, then He wasn't too worried about them. People had been flapping their gums about the Rapture since time out of mind. The captain thought now would be a great time for Jesus to come down and miracle everyone up into heaven. The aliens had killed religion—or at the very least had mortally wounded it. That much was certain. It was hard to say your planet, as well as human creation, was the whole point of the universe existing when there were aliens from outside the Milky Way flying around on saucers. Never mind the notion that God just _had_ to resemble a human.

"No." Vargas decided. "We are all by ourselves. God won't help us. He won't save us."

For some strange reason, that thought was comforting.

He went to back to his report. The council report for last month was "Poor." That was thanks to the squad wipe on the cruiser mission and the terror attack on the part. Their monthly funding had only dropped by $200,000. They _could _make it up, if they fought well from this point on. Already this month was better.

A screen popped up on Vargas' computer. The Gauss rifle clips…

[5]

"…should be able to work now." Technician Carl Yamata said proudly. A crate of freshly manufactured clips sat on the table in front of him.

He was talking to Commander Laura Dreyfus, who was sharing much of his excitement. _No more peashooters, _she thought, _Thank God Almighty we are free at last. _

Before she was able to stop it, she laughed.

"Something's funny, eh?" Yamata asked.

Laura nodded. "You got that right buster. Those gas guns seem weaker than even the conventional weapons they used in the First Alien War."

"I'm not surprised." Yamata said. "Water is a whole different ballgame to air. People tried using guns with hydrodynamic bullets. Like the APS gun that the Russians used. But that's only half the story. Whether they are hydrodynamic or not, they are going to stop _real _fast in the water."

He went on: "Water is thick. It seems thin when you run a faucet through your fingers, but you already know how it is to swim in it. Lemme paraphrase the people on for a moment. 'Water is fluid, yes, but it can only get out of the way so fast.' That's where the gas technology came in. The dart guns, the jet harpoons—both of them have much better range than any bullet in the water, because the gas propulsion keeps it moving even as the water begins to slow it down. You could _snipe_ someone with the guns, if you were able to."

Laura said: "I _have_."

"I expect nothing less from you commander." Yamata said, smiling. Then the smile was gone, and he went back to business, "These coilguns will be even better. Their muzzle velocity above water will be insane, faster than any sniper rifle. Their muzzle velocity in the water will be comparable to a conventional weapon _above _water. Keep that in mind."

He was working himself up into a frenzy. There was a look in his eyes that Laura didn't care for. Not at all.

He was about to launch into a tirade about the stopping power. Something about the pigs that had been target practice. The scientists had used them right after the good results on the ballistics jell. Aiming for the head usually blew up at least one-third of it…

That was when Laura raised a hand. "Easy Carl. I don't wanna be here all day."

Carl Yamata looked visibly hurt. She put a hand on his shoulder. "These things are super. No fuck that—they're awesome. _Par excellent._"

Yamata nodded, grinning. "We haven't leveled the playing field. Not yet. But we're making headway. You have to let George Rankin know we gotta stay that way."

[6]

A new weapon came in, a Coelecanth submersible weapons system. For all practical purposes, they were to be called tanks. This particular tank had a gas cannon weapon with a clip of thirty rounds, which would be more than enough for the average missions. It'd been ordered three weeks ago, but only now came in. It fired the same gas cannon bolts that the Angler's did. Another tank, with Aqua Jet torpedoes, would be here in a week.

[7]

Angler pilot Daphne Sixx was back in action on February 12th. It was largely thanks to the technician's new med kits, or so everyone thought at the time.

Rainbow was quieter now. More reserved, even more so than Jordan Year. It was a change of personality that nearly everyone made note of. The two of them went on a routine patrol to the eastern coast of South America, where there'd been reports of ships being sunk from out of nowhere.

They went around the coast of Brazil for two hours, then came back. The whole time, Rainbow had perhaps spoken twenty sentences and short ones at that. Year had tried to pass the time talking about his newborn son Caleb. For the most part, Rainbow answered him with _yes _or _okay, _but sometimes nothing at all. By the time their patrol was up, Jordan Year was more aggravated than he ever did in his life. Even more so than when he was frantically trying to rescue Rainbow.

On their way back to base, there as a sizeable blip on the radar. It came from behind them.

And was closing in.

[8]

Dr. George Rankin and his research team had finished their research on the particle disturbance sensor. It was very much like the motion scanner from the first alien war. But the motion scanner only worked above water. Below it, the scanner would simply short out. The particle disturbance sensor was the opposite, and would _only _work underwater. As the name implied, it would sense any disturbances in water, but only at a close range.

[9]

New Year's voice came on the radar. _"Rainbow…"_

"I already see it." She said. It was cutting through the water behind them, and gaining fast. "Let's split up and see which one of us it goes after."

_"__You got it."_

Rainbow banked to the left; New Year to the right. Rainbow herself was slightly farther ahead. Perhaps that was why the alien sub chose to follow Jordan.

_ "__Taking evasive action!" _New Year roared.

Rainbow turned back to the right. At thirty kilometers, her DUP torpedoes were already in range.

Sounds of distant explosions in the distance. Flares of green light.

_"__Hurry up Sixx! I've already taken some damage."_

She zoomed in on it, zoomed back out. It was another cruiser, like the one that'd wiped out Haru's squad. This time, things would be easier for the assault team. Because Rainbow was about to kill about half the aliens in it.

The green targeting reticule turned red. _Target locked._

Her finger closed around the trigger.

_(let him die)_

Rainbow's head trembled back and forth. She blinked rapidly. What the fuck had _that _been? She was about to fire again. The voice—and it _was _a voice—spoke again. Louder than before.

_(Let Him Die)_

She tried to fire, but her trigger finger was suddenly as rigid and immovable as stone.

_Shit_! she tried to say…but she could not move her jaws either, or her entire face for that matter. Her body had become a tight statute. Her foot was still on the throttle and she powered forward, closer to the alien submarine. She could not fire on it.

_(that's right let him die let him suffer he mocks you to the others they mock you they fear you kill him kill them)_

_No! _she screamed in her mind, and it felt as loud as a shotgun blast. The voice, which was not just one but several, screamed out in agony and horror.

Her muscles relaxed almost immediately. Just as immediate, her finger depressed the trigger. The DUP torpedoes surged forward with a thick and hollow rushing sound.

She smiled. Then she remembered her battle with the escort (for all purposes a dedicated fighter) and she wondered if this larger cruiser could do evasive maneuvers as well.

_Boom_

She smiled. No…it could not.

She emptied the launchers at it, not really sure if the ship would be destroyed. Likely, it would only be downed and that would remain the case until they got the underwater equivalent of a Fusion Ball Launcher.,

The two bright explosions became six (haha isn't that funny?) and yes, ladies and gentlemen, the alien sub was looking mighty disabled. Pieces were fall off of it. Inky pink fluid was running out of it, nearly obscuring it. Instead of diving quickly, it was sinking slowly—the way a balloon would if the flame guiding it up had lost some of its strength.

They'd done it. _She'd _done it. How many aliens had that killed. A good half-dozen, she thought. Some XCOM Divers had been on several missions and had only killed a fraction of that amount, if that.

"New Year!" she called out on the comms. "You there?"

His Angler was still pinging the sonar, but she was answered with nothing more than dead silence. It lasted six seconds. Six seconds much too long. Rainbow was about to press the comms button again when his voice crackled through.

_"'__amaged. Still 'live. Ang' 'adly damaged. Come in!"_

She went over to him, believing that she'd never been so relieved in her life.

[10]

Officer Clarita Mendoza gave her official resignation to the police department of Auto City. She joined XCOM not even two hours later. She was in reserve, along with many others. She would be transferred over to a new base in the Indian Ocean. It would called Sea Metro.


	12. Pt 2: Ch 8--Clean Run

Clean Run.

[1]

The submarine crash recovery of Feburary 12th went fairly well. It wasn't perfectly clean. It was not squeaky clean. But considering all the disasters that had happened before it, Sacred's Assault team got a pretty good—and pretty clean—run that day. Considering the last assault on a cruiser had wiped out nearly the whole squad, Sacred Assault got pretty lucky.

They touched down at two in the afternoon, Central Time. It meant they had maximum visibility where Haru's doomed team had practically none.

They had Commander Dreyfus and Tanya Olsen on this mission, and that was good. They had their new Gauss rifles and that was even better. The submarine had been disabled and had not landed. Some of the aliens would be dead or dying even as the Triton's port door slid down.

What also helped as that some of the aliens had been taking their retard pills that day. When the doors slid down, the Divers at the front where given an excellent view of the side of an underwater volcano. Lava was rolling from the top of the comma-like formation, and rolling down to their right before disappearing into the Earth, and just in front of that point, there were two Gillmen side by side.

Tanya couldn't tell what they were doing. She only saw that one was looking in their direction and the other was…looking some other which way.

"Contact!" Tanya roared. "One o'clock."

She didn't give the other Divers time to respond, but same four feet out of the Triton and three feet up. With her gas cannon, which she was still assigned to, she fired a snap shot at the Gillmen.

But the high explosive round pulled too far to the left, and she knew it a millisecond after she fired it. The Gillmen split up. The one looking at her went to the right; that was the _right _idea. The one on the left, rolled over to the left. Perhaps Gillmen number 1 had warned number 2 and 2 had just decided to roll away from 1, so the blast didn't get both of them.

It didn't. The torpedo missed Gillmen 2, but hit the volcano formation behind him. There was perhaps six feet of water separating the formation from the alien. Nothing more and nothing less.

Its legs were blasted off. It screamed out in pain and fright. The blast sent it spinning toward the Triton. Its drill went spinning away from it, somersaulting through the water.

Commander Dreyfus came out of the sub. So did Claude and Haru. They, along with Rachel Henderson, would be the forward scouts. They were each armed with two Gauss pistols (machine pistols) really. Hugo Urien and Kenny would be sniping with Gauss rifles from long range. The heavy Gauss cannons were not done yet. Tanya would probably be getting that particular weapon.

"Spread out!" Commander Laura said. "Haru and Claude go around the left side of the volcano. Phillip Burnell, go with them. Be careful I see another rock formation to the left of it. Hugo! Kenny! You guys go up top and do what you do best! Rachel! Tanya! You guys are with me."

Claude didn't much care for that. He'd rather fight alongside his sister than Phil Burnell, who was a coward and an asshole. Oh well. Orders were orders. Hopefully Laura's didn't get them killed.

Claude and Haru swam into the volcano's left entrance. It was a mangled V-shape, kinda like the crescent on Quickman's head in Mega Man 2. Claude said so to Haru, and the latter laughed.

Phil was lagging behind.

"Hurry up you fat prick!" Claude yelled at him. He didn't like Burnell. Take Haru Ichiro, with his lack of skill, and put an ego on him the size of an alien battleship and you had Phil. Phil could do no wrong. Everything bad that happened to him was because of something external.

"Not my fault!" Phil shouted. "Why are you guys swimming so damn fast?! The aliens aren't going anywhere.'

Claude wanted to slap him.

His thoughts were cut short as they saw an Aquatoid. They saw the top third of its round, bulbous head. That was a shock and the shock allowed the rest of the alien's head to pop up without getting blasted off. But it was looking completely the wrong way, and Claude's reflexes caught up with him.

His pistol was raised and nearly fired. Then he thought better of it, and began closing the distance. He swam in an undulating motion, like what dolphins did. He was a decent swimmer if nothing else. By the time the alien had realized that an enemy was behind it, and it had finished turning around, Claude perhaps five feet away from it. Claude fired a burst from his pistol. Three shots, three sounds that were like gears turning in some great device. The Aquatoid was struck first in the chin and was probably dead instantly. But the second shot stuck the alien high on the chest, and the final one snapped one of its knees apart.

The alien drifted away from them, it's sonic rifle turning through the water.

Claude and Haru stared at it. Not moving. Not talking.

The aliens didn't mix crews in the First Alien Wars. And of course there were exception to that. Terror Missions, base assaults, base defenses had the frontline units and their terror unit. So did terror ships and battleships.

But this? Two different races on a small ship. That was odd.

_But just be a straggler. It might not mean anything._

It might not. But they had to keep on moving. There was a small bed of lava in front of them (_That doesn't make much sense does it, _Claude thought). Haru and Claude rose about twenty feet into the air and swam over it. The unarmored dive suits could, at the very least, insulate them from much of the heat.

In front of them, the valley of the volcano formation kept on going. A Gillmen suddenly came up above one of the peaks on their right flank, smiling. It raised its gun. Its markings and eyes shined red. Then it took two shots in the left hip. At the same time. The effect was like a power saw had been applied to it. The left hip came apart like a can of soup with a pull-open top.

The Gillmen screamed, yet at the same time it kept its smile. The expression was like a bizarre mixture of terror and utter relief. The guts spilled out in a sickening orange flood.

Claude and Haru turned their heads to the Triton. The designated snipers Hugo Urien and Kenny waved at them from a distance. Claude thought he would never be so relieved in his life.

H could hear more screams in the distance, all of them alien screams, and Claude's relief swelled inside of his chest like a warm balloon.

[2]

Laura's team only encountered one alien on the volcano's right flank. Another Gillmen, This one was attached to the bottom.

"Mine!" Tanya screamed cheerfully, and let loose with the torpedo before anyone could say anything. She was only lagging behind the squad a little bit, and the team had parted ways enough that she had a line of fire. And none of the Divers were that close to the Gillmen…so why the fuck not?  
This time, there was nothing much left of the alien. Which meant, that they probably wouldn't be able to salvage half of its gear, or even most of it. Still, Laura Dreyfus thought, a dead alien was a dead alien.

Not like there wouldn't be more of them

[3]

They were at the entrance to the sub now. They'd thought that a portion of it would be destroyed, allowing them easy enough entrance.

That wasn't the case. The damn thing was still intact.

That was fucking weird.

_Faulty intelligence,_ Claude thought.

Maybe. Maybe not. It didn't matter.

Claude had the magnapack explosive; he took it out of his belt now. He gesture for the others to get a safe distance away. They all went around the respective "pinchers" of the lobster ship, while Claude simply turned and swam in the opposite direction. He made sure to put a good thirty feet between himself and the magnapack. It was being used as a makeshift breaching charge…and not a real one. It was hard plastic, not at all malleable, and you couldn't shape it to explode more to one side or the other. Divers were urged to treat it as such, so they wouldn't end up like Maddie Watson.

There was a flash of sudden yellow light. It was smothered by water almost immediately, but it didn't matter. The damage was done.

Underwater explosions were a curious sound. Claude had always thought that the sound would be muffled by the water—maybe even quiet. That wasn't the case. Instead, the cells of his body all seemed to shake in unison as the shockwave passed through it. It tickled the dampness of his sweating skin, and sent an electric ripple from the top of his spine to the bottom.

Smoke billowed out from the entrance. Claude moved in, both guns drawn before he thought better of it and put one in his belt. Better accuracy if you carried the gun in a two-handed grip…even if you didn't need to.

Once he was inside, though, he'd fucked them up akimbo-style. Haru probably would too, as well as Claude's sister and Rachel.

_"__Contact!" _someone called out. Claude's eyes cut to the entrance door, staring into the churning clouds for signs of movement or glowing red. No. It came from above the ship. The roof of the ship. The alien was hugging along it, head as close as possible to the dulled orange of the sub's hull. Most of the other Divers were just above seabed level. Hugo Urien and Kenny were not. They were playing catch up. Both had had time to see the alien trying to flank.

Hugo and Kenny fired six times each. All of the shots missed unfortunately. But the alien turned and started moving across the roof of the ship, toward the bow of it. The Divers didn't let him. They all looked over the lip of the cruiser and opened fire at the Gillmen as it attempted to move toward the bow of the roof.

Eventually, it was taken down—and the limbs weren't blown off, but tangled together like a thrown ragdoll.

Commander Laura said: "We're clear! Everyone head in."

Rachel Henderson was the first in, dual pistols raised and ready.

The entranceway had the door on the right intact, while the door on the left was not. Rachel parked in the corner. Laura got beside her.

"How long should we wait?" Rachel asked.

The commander opened her mouth to answer, but then an Aquatoid came through the intact door on the right flank. Laura and Rachel immediately opened fire. The Aquatoid shrieked in terror and pain; its head banged against the edge of the doorway. Rachel thought she heard the wet snap of bone. It made her sick.

"One down." Laura said. Claude and Haru came through the smoke of the front doors, which was already thinning out considerably.

"Claude you were right." Laura said. "The enemies are mixing their crews now."

Claud nodded somberly. Now, Tanya came through the smoke. Her torpedo had been discarded and she was holding a spare Gauss pistol.

"Makes sense." Haru said quickly. "People are given different jobs based on their skills. Maybe the aliens do the same thing."

"Roger." Laura said. "Claude, you and Haru take the left room of the sub. Tanya, you go with them. Me and Rachel take the right."

"Who's got the med kits?" Claude asked.

"I do." Haru said. "And I aced the underwater training for them too."

His tone of pride was unmistakable. It was also surprising. Claude had never heard him sound happy or proud in his life.

"Let's make sure we don't fucking need them." Laura said.

All the Divers nodded somberly at that.

They split up. Neither of their sides were clear.

On the left side, there was a single Gillmen. His back was too them. It looked, to Claude, like the creature was tending to the computer. How it hadn't heard its comrade being plugged just one room over, Claude didn't know and didn't care to guess.

Smiling, feeling confident, Tanya swam toward it. Slowly.

_Tanya wait! _Claude nearly shouted. But he knew the alien would hear. His mouth shut with a click. On his right, Haru peeked through the open doorway.

Tanya was six feet away from the Gillmen when it whipped around suddenly, startling Claud.

It had a drill in its hand. A slightly larger one than the first XCOM had seen. It's smile was merry and full of good humor. The Gillmen put its legs on the computer and pushed off. Pushed off hard.

It came barreling at Tanya, who couldn't react in time, only managing to do a silly half-turn. She screamed as the alien drill glanced her right shoulder. Blood spilled out in a thin red fog.

Claude fired. Haru fired. Claude's shots were mostly accurate. The first and second shots snapped the Gillmen's left leg apart. Haru's shots were wild. One got the creature's shoulder, making it recoil noticeably. But the second and third shots sailed perhaps an inch away from Tanya's swiveling head.

"Fuck!" Haru shrieked. Claude said nothing, but fired again. Taking his time. The wind had gotten knocked out of the Gillmen's sails; and it was retreating to the doors leading to the cockpit of the sub.

Still shouting in pain, Tanya retreated toward Claude. He moved past her and kept firing. By this point, the alien was halfway through the far door. This time all of Claude's shots missed.

"Damn it!" Claude thought about smashing his fist on the sub's wall. That would only result in a broken hand. Instead, he kept the door covered with a pistol. He turned to look at Tanya.

"I'm fine!" Tanya said. Her teeth were clenched and the words came out as a grunt.

Haru was already tending to her. The med kit instrument had isolated the breach in the suit with an airtight bubble dispenser (made of advance polymers including alien alloys). Now a needle was going through the bubble and applying the painkillers that would be needed to apply the healing solution.

Tanya would make it. Claude was relieved.

"Pay attention to the fucking door!" Tanya yelled, eyes narrowed.

Claude turned back to it. And went towards it.

[4]

On the other side, there was Rachel at the opposite door. He felt a sudden rush of terror as he saw the orange blood she was _covered_ with.

She saw the look in his face. "It's not mine. You know that."

His brain did, but his heart didn't. He had to get himself together. They'd done fine so far. As long as they stayed frosty…

Rachel said. "Look!" Raising her gun at the same time. She was looking over at the alien cockpit area. Over by the two metal balls at the pointy end of the ship, was the Gillmen he had wounded about forty seconds ago.

It was up against a wall. It was being held there by two Aquatoids. One of them was keeping it pinned to the wall. The other was holding a strange instrument: boxy, an acidic green, rectangular like one of XCOM med kits. A purple tube emerged from the box, and as Claude entire lumps went from one end of the tube to the other. The wounds the pistol had torn open were already gone.

_They're…healing each other._

"Alien medics?"

The Gillmen's head was cocked back. Now it turned to Claude. The Aquatoids' heads turned. Their eyes went wide and lit up with fright.

Laura pushed through, moving Rachel into the center. She saw what was happening.

One of the aliens, moved—one of the medics. The one holding the box. It swam toward them, slowly. Its hands were outstretched, palms empty.

Rachel and Laura fired. The medic's head disintegrated. It was forced back into the other aliens. There was a flurry of panicked movement, but there was no place to hide. Rachel and Laura emptied their guns. Reloaded. Started firing again. Claude took their lead. Reloading but he did not fire after that.

It looked like one of the aliens—the second medic—was trying to reach for the nooks, where it could hide. It didn't make it.

Rachel and Laura stopped shooting. The pointy end of the cockpit was covered by a foggy wall of blood.

There was a long wall of silence between the three of them. When it was broken, it was by Claude.

"Surrendering."

"What?" Rachel asked.

"They were trying to fucking surrender. Why did we shoot at them."

Laura said. "We don't know that shit."

"We shot at them because they are aliens." Rachel said. "They are invaders."

"They were surrendering." Claude said again. "At least the medic swimming toward us was."

"Shut the fuck up Claude." Laura said. "I mean it."

But her voice trembled and Claude knew that she felt like crying.

[5]

They only realized Phil Burnell had gone missing after they'd already piled into the Triton and the pilot was about to dust off.

The Triton spent the next two hours looking for him. When it left, Anglers 1 and 2, piloted by Rainbow and New Year. They didn't find any trace of Phil. Neither hide, nor hair. Neither asshole nor eyeball.

Tanya took his all of his stuff, and vowed to sell it on Ebay.

[6]

Considering that only one person went MIA…yeah, it was a pretty clean run truth be told.


	13. Pt 2: Ch 9--?

?

[1]

Somewhere deep beneath the waves of the world, an enormous yellow eye opens. The moment is brief. Less than a second. But in that one precious second, all of the oceans seem to hush. Not in honor or respect, but in terror.

It thinks...

[2]

_…__..we….._

_…__.we…were here…..._

_…__.we were here…first_


	14. Pt 2: Ch: 10--Stun Run

Stun Run

[1]

February 2040

They wouldn't have another big battle until March. But that was fine. They would have plenty of little ones.

On the thirteenth, a USO rose out of the East China Sea and made suddenly for Japan. It was intercepted by a combined effort. On one end was, Free China: a squadron of Chengdu J-50 stealth fighters headed in from the northwest. One the other end: the less advanced Mitsubishi F-10 (Oni) fighters from Neo Japan.

Both squadrons were armed with Stella Mark II cannons as well as Sidewinders tipped with depleted uranium. Before they got a chance to do much of anything, right before the weapons of the Chengdu, the USO dropped.

Like a rock.

Back into the ocean. It might've made a massive tidal wave with the impact, making a watery Butterfly Effect that would've flooded Broome over in Australia, but the USO hit the metaphorical brakes just before impact, making a decidedly muted wave that was only barely felt in Japan hours later.

The leader of Ronin Squadron, a cautious man in his late 30s named Shigeru Suda, was just as much relieved as he was disappointed.

[2]

February 14, a USO going around the Pacific was knocked out of the sky by a squadron F-22 Raptors deployed by the USS Barack Obama. Though an aging design, the stealth frame had more than proved its worth in the Second American Civil War.

But against the USO, another "escort" this one, half of the Raptors had been shot down. A fourth generation fighter, Fleet Admiral Harold Lansing would later say in a report, would probably have experienced a total loss.

[3]

A total loss is what the cargo ship _Pilgrim _experienced while in transit from South Africa to Madagascar. The ship had been hauling 6 million dollars worth of cargo (of what, the parent company Solmine could not say) when it disappeared in the middle of the year's shortest month, which would be twenty-nine days long like it would be every leap year. With it was a crew of 217 people, mostly woman. There was no emergency call on the radio. No alarms sounded. One second, Captain Bob Yarnes had been talking to Douglas Fritz, stationed at the company port on the western end of the island, and one second later Fritz was getting nothing but static. No heavy, crisp static—but pure flat noise. White noise.

His friends had joked with him about how the radio was trying to give a good rendition of the man's surname, but Fritz hadn't found that funny. A good friend of his was on the ship, someone he hadn't seen in years.

Planes from South Africa did a flyover of the ship's preplanned route. When that hadn't come to anything (a ship could only drift so far nowadays without a warning buzzer going off on the bridge), a team of Barracudas swept the route underwater. When they didn't find it, they patrolled in a wider circle. Nothing. No ship wreckage.

No nothing.

[4]

Three days later, the boys and girls of Sea Metro, in the Indian Ocean, got their first taste of combat.

A cruiser was sighted fifteen minutes away. Sea Metro was still building their second sub pen, so there was no Angler sub to disable the ship. It would either land or it would not.

Either choice was good for Clarita Mendoza, who felt more exhausted than she cared to admit. The nightmares were still there, but the medicine was weakening them. They foggy now, instead of vivid; and it seemed she was trapped in their hold for minutes now instead of hours.

She yawned in the sub, stretching her arms.

"Tired Dozer?" Simon Samson asked beside her in the sub.

These idiots kept calling her that, because she kept falling asleep during most of these Triton rides.

"Fuck off SS." Rita said, and checked her weapon, then rechecked it. She had one of the few gauss rifles. SS and Jerry Lee had the others. Tanaka and Enrique were armed with gas cannons loaded with HE rounds. Len Quade had the only jet harpoon and two med kits, with orders to hang back in the unlikely case that anyone would survive an alien shot long enough to need them.

Everyone else was armed with gauss pistols.

"Cut the chatter idiots." Jerry Lee said. He was the only able seaman. The rest of them were what Lee liked to call "fresh seaman" a term that wasn't really all that funny but never failed to make SS giggle like a tickled schoolgirl. "Here's the deal. Yesterday our humble little base in this neck of the waters got an alien containment center. Command wants us to start putting it to use. Everyone pull out your stun weapons."

The Divers did as ordered. Said weapons were a far cry from the grey stunning rods of the First Alien War. These were thermal tazers, bright red and yellow in color. There was a white button on the handle. If they pressed it, a cold charge would go right into the tip of the weapon, flash-freezing whoever was on the business end of it.

"I've got a question boss." Simon started, raising his hand.

"Well shut up because I don't care."

"Great leadership we got here." Gabriel said. He was checking the settings of his magnapack.

"You can shut up too Gabe."

"Congressional Medal of Honor shit right here."

"Shut the fuck up I said."

Gabriel laughed and Simon joined him. Rita and most of the others did not.

"It'll be night time as we are touching down more likely than not." Jerry Lee said. "Right now it's one in the morning. We won't be getting sun for another six hours"

All the Divers cursed. Rita sucked in air through her teeth.

"Enough of that." Jerry Lee said. "There were plenty of night missions during the First Alien War. And in the end we won a lot of them."

"I read up on the data on that." SS said. "They won them after they started running around with power armor and plasma rifles."

Jerry Lee shook his head. "Well we are still a long way away from that. The pubes over at Sacred Tear haven't finished their research on plastic armor. It's supposed to be even stronger than the alien alloy personal armor we used to use."

"Hopefully our guys don't sell it all after the war is over." Gabe said.

"Hopefully we all live that long to complain about it." Rita said quietly.

"That was fucking morbid." Len Quade said.

General laughter all around. But it was just worry and terror with its makeup on.

The Triton's pilot, Taxi spoke on the intercom: "Assault squad, the alien cruiser has touched down. ETA: ten minutes."

"You heard the man, squad; ready up." Jerry Lee said.

"Who knows guys." Len said, and his voice was high and soft with youth. He was only eighteen. "Maybe we won't have a single casualty!"

"You guys hear this fucking nosewipe?" Gabe said, laughing. But the laughter had a morbid edge to it now.

"

[5]

Taxi set them down. The doors fell open, and the darkness of the waters seemed almost solid.

Enrique and Tanaka were the ones in front of the door. Enrique tossed a flare out. In the distance, they could make out a giant skeletal frame. It was a slight grey in the dark waters.

"What is that?" Tanaka said quietly.

Jerry Lee peeked through the shoulders of the pair. "I dunno. Maybe a sunken ship."

Rita's heart sank at the thought of it. A ship knocked down by the aliens? How many people had been on it.

She thought of all the rotted bodies they would see if they went inside. Bodies so swollen with rot they would pop like meaty balloons if touched.

She shook her head of the thought.

Tanaka went outside, swung his gun to he left; Enrique went out, swung his gun to the right.

"No contact." Tanaka said.

"Me neither." Enrique said.

Jerry Lee swam out of the sub. "Looks like we've got a sunken ship too in the middle of the area. Scratch that, it's scattered all over the place."

"No USO?" SS asked.

"Negative. It might be on the other side of that wreckage. Okay everyone. You'll come out in pairs of two. We're gonna sweep through the whole place in one big line. Who's our sniper?"

"Me." Rita said quietly. She checked her gun a third time. Though it was a gauss rifle, it was modified to have a simple telescopic sight.

"Are you good to go Rita?" Jerry Lee asked.

"I'm right as rain."

She swam out of the sub and rose through the waters. She turned and lit a flare off, she let it drift over to the starboard side of the ship. She knew what had happened to the torpedo trooper Quentin weeks ago. Better safe than screwed.

She turned back to the sunkin ship and watched as the Divers came out with an agonizing deliberateness. Tanaka and Enrique spread out. Tanaka was joined by Jerry Lee, Gabe, Thurgood, Dewier, and Henrick. Enrique was followed by Len Quade, Dorothy, Babs and Alba.

Flares were lit off, glowing a bright green, and let go—drifting up into the wide wooden decks of the ship. The broken undercarriages of the ship had plenty of nooks that aliens could be hiding in. Nooks that she probably wouldn't be able t shoot into.

The ship itself was actually broken quite neatly, Rita saw: into thirds. Enrique's group was sweeping around the stern; Jerry Lee's group swept the bow. The middle was actually the largest. It would have to be a compromise of whoever was assigned to go there.

SS swam up to Rita. "You sure you're okay?"

Rita felt her free hand tighten into a fist. "I said I was, so I am."

SS shrugged his shoulders as much as he could underwater.

"There's a rock outcropping between our Triton and the wreck. You see it?"

Rita could.

"We should post up there. There are a bunch of nooks in there we can hole up in? Agreed?"

"Sure." Rita said flatly. The two of them swam over to it, Rita much faster than SS. She didn't want any aliens jumping her mates while the two of them were relocating.

"CONTACT!" Len Quade screamed.

Rita nestled herself into a nook in the rock, and looked toward the far side of the wreck. An alien had popped over the far side of the bow, a dark silhouette with glowing red eyes like stoplights. Quade was on the other side, and the two of them were both peering over the deck.

They both fired at the same time. Quade missed. His dart smacked against a fractured railing just beside the alien. The alien missed as well. The blast smacked into the deck in front of Quade. Wooden shrapnel exploded out, and a number of it hit Quade right in his helmet. He recoiled back, half flipping over.

"I'm hit! I'm hit!"

The alien moved out onto the deck. It was a Gillmen. It made it three steps and then a single round fired from Rita hit it directly in the groin.

It buckled over, folding in on itself. Beside Quade, Enrique peeked over the deck and fired a shot from the gas cannon. The explosion took out a chunk of the deck beside the Gillmen. The Gillmen arms popped off the torso and went out into the dark waters like floating twigs.

_"__Good shot Dozer!" _Enrique said.

He had to struggle to be heard over Quade's screaming.

"Len shut the shitting fuck up!" Dorothy yelled. "You're not hit!"

The scream fell away into awkward silence. Alba was laughing at Len, clucking like a hen.

_"__Stay frosty!" _Jerry Lee said, voice braying. _"We're still on a mission and don't you idiots forget it!"_

Smiling ruefully, Rita looked through her scope. It was a Hydra Mark VII, and its night vision scope in the water was quite strong. A distant flare made things seem as clear as day.

She spotted something. The rifle turned ever so slightly in the rocky outcropping.

Another figure moving on the far side of the wreck, moving around the right flank of the ship. It was going to run into Alba in a matter of seconds.

"Alba. You got a tango right in front of you."

She depressed the trigger, relishing the thick mechanical sound of the firing action. The orange bolt sailed through the waters, losing no speed at all it seemed. It took the dark figure square in the center of its face.

Rita's heart sank. For a split second, she thought that she might've hit one of her fellow Divers who'd gone through the ship too quickly and came outside to circle around.

But she didn't. The dark figure glowed faintly red, and a bluish green blast shot wildly out of its weapon. It shot wildly and handsomely into the dark waters above.

"Jesus H Christ!" Alba said, voice crackling. "Thanks Dozer."

"Roger that." Rita said. Hoping that her own voice sounded even. Alba looked a bit like Peter Gibbons, her late thief friend. Actually, that was wrong. Alba looked like he could've been a close relative of Gibbs. Maybe even a long-lost twin.

She'd be lying if she said she was attracted to him. She was not. But in the end, she had liked him. Liked him a lot.

"Contact!" a Diver shouted from the underside of the shipwreck. "Right in front of—"

The words were choked off by a scream.

[6]

Enrique had rushed too far ahead of the others, and the Gillmen ambushed him in the galley of the ship. Here, there were barrels of food that had since been consumed by the sea, and tables covered with salt and brine, and a sword floating around in the corner of the ship. Two human skeletons were laying on top of one of the tables. Their clothes were nondescript black scraps glued to their bodies.

For a moment, Enrique had been distracted, not by all the crap in the room, but by the flora that was growing across the walls. Large bioluminescent plants, with heads like giant mushrooms. Their faint glow was a healthy yellow color that pleased Enrique's eyes, and he hadn't known the Gillmen had entered through the gap on the opposite wall until it had knocked over a solid gold vase on the floor.

Enrique turned, fear climbing into his throat like bile, and he pushed off the floor with his legs.

"Contact!" Enrique shouted into his headset. "Right in front of—"

The Gillmen eyes turned red and the alien rifle fired.

Dorothy appeared in the door Enrique had come through. "What's going on?!"

And she received the answer when the round took her right in the center of her stomach. Blood spilled out everywhere, and her scream was wet and strangled with blood. It faded into nothing even before she slammed into the wall behind her.

Babs, who'd been right be, side her, screamed, "Fuck!" and fired six panic shots from her gauss pistol. The gold vase shattered in a slow shrapnel; the table in the center lost one of its legs, which folded like a hinge; one of the dead subjects on the table had its arm popped up like it was trying to swat a fly.

One of the pistol shots tore a chunk of the alien's shoulder. The alien rifle was forced to the right, and it fired a second time, blowing a hole through the window on Enrique's left.

Enrique cast the gas cannon aside, ripped his thermal tazer out of his backpack.

_I won't have enough time, _he thought. Already the Gillmen was bringing the rifle back around, its red markings glowing faintly. He charged anyway, screaming a warlike cry that burned his ears.

He stared into the glowing muzzle of the gun. Its warm hum sounded like death.

He stabbed out with the thermal tazer. It connected right where a person's sternum would've been. The warm, deathly humming of the alien's gun began to fade. The glowing red markings on its body began to fade.

And from the point where the thermal tazer touched the alien, a blanket of ice spread across the creature's skin. In a matter of seconds, the creature was a fucking ice sculpture. Enrique swam back, taking it all in. It struck him as deliciously funny and he had to stifle back laughter.

Babs swam up to him, her hands shaking noticeably even in the water. Tanaka was behind her.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Tanaka said, frightened.

Now, Enrique _did _burst out laughing, and it was harsh and frightened laughter.

[7]

The shipwreck's underside was fully swept while Rita kept eyes on the top. No new threats emerged when Jerry Lee said on the radio that the wreck was clear.

Rita and SS looked at one another and nodded. They swam forward until they reached the top of the wreck. The remaining Divers other than Dorothy all emerged from the other side of the wreck. One of them (Tanaka) waved at her. Or maybe at SS. It didn't matter.

She and SS moved up to where they were, but stayed on this side of the broken rails at the edge of the ship.

Without saying anything, the Divers were throwing out more of those motorized flares. They lit fairly little, but it was better than nothing.

"Tanaka." Jerry Lee said. "Throw out one of those phosphorous rounds."

"Roger doger." He said, and loaded his cannon up with it.

He fired into the dark, and they must've had some benevolent deity looking over them. Because the round set "fire" to a small reef, and revealed the alien submarine.

[8]

It had touched down, about twenty feet from where the shipwreck's central mast had fallen. The mast itself had gotten wedged in the ground like a magic sword of fable; and there was an alien fucking about near this mast. It was an Aquatoid, armed with a pistol and something else. It was about thirty feet away from them.

When the portion of the sea in front of them was suddenly lit on fire, the Aquatoid turned, giving the Divers a slightly better look at the equipment it was holding. Maybe a med kit, but it looked quite different.

The creature's eyes bugged out in surprise, it swam for the door of the submarine, which was facing to the right of the Divers. Once it got a certain distance, the port compartment of the ship would block any fire.

"Rita! SS! Take the shot!"

Rita aimed and fired. The first shot sailed by the creature's head, missing by inches. SS fired a burst. Two rounds missed. The third round nicked the alien in its foot.

Rita's rifle turned slowly, compensating for lead. She fired again, and it seemed the magnetic bullet went through the Indian Ocean in slow motion.

_I don't aim with my hand; I aim with my eye._

And it seemed the eye _was _following the bullet. Her eye was following it from closely behind.

_I don't shoot with my finger; I shoot with my mind._

The bullet tore open the left side of the Aquatoids torso. It screamed out in pain and fright. But after five seconds—five seconds that were very long to Rita—it was silent.

_I don't kill with my gun; I kill with my _heart.

The gunslinger's creed—or at the very least, her own butchered version of it.

"Fucking awesome shot Rita!" SS whispered beside her.

Rita smiled. The first genuinely happy smile she had had in a long time.

[9]

The Divers spread out on both sides of the door. Rita and SS covered it from the mast.

On Jerry Lee's order, Tanaka retrieved a magnapack explosive from his belt. He set the timer to 30 seconds and placed it directly on the door.

Len Quade came out from the shipwreck, med kit in hand. He was splashed with blood from the waist down. His eyes looked bagged and terrible.

"How's Dorothy?" Jerry Lee asked. It was a pointless question, and he knew it, but whatever.

"Gone." Quade answered. And that was the end of it. Quade looked horrible. He'd _liked_ Dorothy, and everyone at Sea Metro knew it. Except for Dorothy herself.

"Keep it together Len." Jerry Lee said. He was trying to be firm, trying to be the tough hard-ass he probably saw when he looked in the mirror, but when he spoke it was with nothing less than utter sorrow.

"I know."

"We need you."

"I _know._" Len Quade's tone changed. Into something Jerry Lee could not identify…or would not.

"Ten seconds!" Tanaka said. "Stand clear!"

They stood clear.

"Maybe the blast will kill some aliens."

Rita raised her own gun and said nothing.

[10]

There was a titanic explosion and the door had a big gash in it.

When the sound died down, Jerry Lee went on the radio. "Okay squad! Get your freezers out."

They did so.

"How are we supposed to aim with our cannons and stun things at the same time?"

"Well, you really can't." Jerry Lee admitted. "You gotta holster those cannons. You can't shoot them off in the USO. Duh."

Tanaka groaned.

"Inside everybody. Gabe. Dewier. Henrick. You guys take point."

The three slapped their heads almost in unison. "Why us?" Gabe asked.

"You act as if I have to explain that to you."

"Sheesh." Dewier said. "Somebody has it out for us."

"Come on guys." Henrick said. "Let's get the big bad aliens so Jerry boy doesn't shit his pants."

The laughter followed them as they went in. Dewier and Henrick put their backs against the entrance way's far wall. Their laughter dried up immediately.

"How are we doing this?" Dewier asked.

"Same way we did in the Battle Zone drills." Gabe said. He was hovering in of the port hall's door. "I'll go first. Henrick come with me."

"I've got the PD sensor." Dewier said, taking it out of his belt and turning to face the wall. He stared at the sensor only briefly, then pointed one hand to his right. "The starboard hall is clear."

"The port hall?" Gabe asked.

Dewier pointed. "One alien."

"The central cockpit?"

"Two. Remember this thing only detect movements. There could be some aliens pitching tents in there and camping."

"Yes." Gabe said. "Keep your eyes peeled also, and your gun up."

Dewier raised his gauss pistol and nodded.

Gabe tapped the port hall's door with the butt of his gun. It went up with a thick metallic sound.

They swam into the port hall. Gabe hugged the left wall and kept his pistol trained on the far door on to the right. "We'll freeze them if we can. But if it's too dangerous, don't risk it. Okay? I don't care if the eggheads and the techies bitch about it. It ain't their lives on the line."

"You got it beautiful." Henrick said, grinning. His pistol was trained where the wall turned left and made a corner. He knew it winded around into a compartment—with an alien computer—that an alien might want to hide in. The alien would either be tinkering with gadgets here in front of the door, or in the computer area.

They rounded the corner. Gabe rose in the water a little bit, allowing Henrick to swim under his outstretched arm.

"Not toying with the gadgets here." Henrick said.

"Gotta be with the computer then."

"Stay here and cover the door to the cockpit."

"You sure?" Gabe asked.

"Fuck no." Henrick said, but he only whispered the words out. "But do it anyway. I won't be a moment. If I am then…" The words trailed off. He swam forward, to the corner at the port-most point of the ship (seeing bits and pieces of metal on the ground and thinking nothing of it), and went around.

Then he saw the fucker…and something else too.

It was an Aquatoid, it was armed with nothing but one of those drill things on its back, and it was swimming nearly flat against the floor. The front side alien computer was open and exposed and it seemed wires were going everywhere. One cord in particular was hugging the ground and was attached to….

Henrick screamed, and his scream was pure terror.

It was a whitish green…thing. With eyes glowing red, and a pink hose traveling from its "face" to its stomach. The crown of its head had the thin fins of an Aquatoid, the arms were Gillmen's, and the feet looked like the monstrous feet of some gigantic mutated duck. He was lying prone on the floor, not floating, not moving. But its red eyes rolled in their sockets.

It was alive. No question about that.

The Aquatoid turned around, its big bulbous eyes looking comically stupid on its big bulbous head. Henrick had already moved in with his thermal tazer.

Its hands flew up, probably to block the tazer or bat it away. But the tip went through both hands with ease and poked the creature right square on the forehead. It froze in a matter of seconds, and Henrick watched as the ice sculpture, floated away from him, rapping smartly on the nearby wall but not breaking.

Henrick turned toward the strange new alien, aiming the pistol at it. It almost gave him physical pain not to shoot it. "Fuck." He cursed, and

Gabe came around the corner. "What's going on?!"

Gabe was here. That meant he wasn't watching the door. Immediately he took fire. A burst of energy sailed into his leg and ripped it off.

[11]

Gabe screamed, everything from his torso down was bathed in a searing white pain that eclipsed all of existence. He turned, his body numb from his chest up, his outstretched hand firing off bursts, and then rapidly depleting the clip.

The Gillmen was standing in the doorway. The one he'd failed to cover. His vision was blurred and his mind was numb and death was a hopscotch jump away, but on my honor this: Another panicked man would've had most of his shots miss. Maybe even all of them. But as for our friend Gabe—none of his shots missed. He fired off all twenty rounds of a pistol that looked like it should only hold half that amount…and all the shots hit. Every last one.

The Gillmen was shredded from head to toe, it went somersaulting like a pinwheel. It cracked its ruined head against the door on the other side.

Gabe smiled. Laughed even. Blood spurted out from his mouth, but he felt no pain. It covered the inside of his visor, but he was only dimly aware of it.

Henrick was saying something to his right. But the world was spinning out away from him. And Gabe was in a cyclone of fogginess that seemed to go on forever.

[12]

The last alien was huddled in the corner. It was panicking firing shots off wildly. All of them missed Jerry Lee and Tanaka, though they had only been ten feet away. With each blast, the hairs on Jerry Lee's skin stood up. Like a goose just walked over his grave. A flash of numbness would travel across his body, and then it would be gone. He hated the feeling.

And as the creature fished for something on its own belt—a spare ammo clip or perhaps grenade—Jerry Lee and Tanaka charged the bastard with their thermal tazers.

[13]

Quade wasn't able to stop Gabe's bleeding.


	15. Pt 2: Ch 11--Research II

Research II

[1]

February 25

"What the flaming fuck is this thing?"

George Rankin whispered the words to his audience: Petrenko. Mahmoud. Donovan. It was two in the fucking morning, and he was ragged.

They were in the alien containment facility. Nearly every single module here in Sacred Tear was connected to at least two others. The exception was the alien containment facility—only one way in or out.

In front of the scientist, the prisons of reinforced glass stretched like an immense wall. There was room enough for twenty aliens and no more.

There were a couple priorities. The MVPs as it were.

The most important thing was the mashed-up…thing that the Diver Henrick had come across. Right now, it was strapped onto a table. The table was underwater, but a quick draining of the prison had shown that the Hybrid was amphibious. That was no surprise, it was the same deal with Aquatoids and Gillmen.

"Computer, deck four, turn the table forward." George Rankin ordered.

"Order acknowledged." came a voice from the ceiling.

The table the hybrid was strapped to was raised up and tilted forward, so that the thing was nearly in a standing position. The red eyes blared. They rolled from Rankin, to Mahmoud, to Donovan.

"Can you hear us?" Rankin asked. He gave the hybrid a couple seconds to understand, but he knew how this routine would go. During the First Alien War, none of these cocksuckers could understand any human language except for the Sectoids and that was largely due to the Sectoids having experience with humans since the '50s. Every other alien, from Floater, to Snakemen, to Mutons, to the asshole Ethereals; they all required that a Sectoid was translating for them, and for the human.

But the hybrid nodded.

Rankin took a moment or two to fully process what he was seeing. His jaw fell down. "Guys! Did you see that?"

"What?" Mahmoud asked. Everyone else had been looking.

"Are you people brain dead or something?"

"Just tell us what the fuck happened." Donovan said sharply.

"Watch." Rankin spoke to the Hybrid. "Can you understand me."

The Hybrid nodded.

"What should we call this thing?"

"A Deep One?" Mahmoud suggested.

"You mean like the lizard things from Lovecraft."

"Yes."

"But they don't really look like that." Rankin said. "They are a mix and mash of Gillmen and Aquatoid…"

"And human." Dr. Petrenko said. "Those red eyes, aren't. They are goggles. The eyes behind them are human."

An unpleasant chill crawled up Rankin's spine. Biological Frankenstein weapons. Not a pleasant thought.

"Hybrids." Rankin said. "That's what they are. That's what we'll call them."

Petrenko frowned, but with approval, nodding her head.

"Computer. Take a sample of the alien's skin."

A drone came down from the ceiling—a small thing with a metal claw extending out of the ball-shaped torso. The drone hovered down to the Deep One. The metal claws opened and closed. They opened again, and one of the claws scraped two inches or so of the hybrid's skin. They didn't draw blood—it wasn't necessary. A couple skin cells were all that was needed.

"There seems to be a problem." The computer said.

"What now?" Rankin asked.

"The skin seems tougher than what we estimated."

"How is that possible?" Petrenko asked.

"The skin is protected by a polymer mesh that is of the same makeup on the unidentified submersible objects."

"The aqua plastics." George Rankin. That was his name for them as well.

"That is correct."

Mahmoud asked: "Will a skin sample be difficult to get?"

"Negative." The computer said. "But I will require a pair of shears."

"Well," George Rankin began. "Hurry it up then."

"Yes sir." The bottom of the drone's torso opened up, and out came a pair of scissors.

"Maybe the mesh will give us the ability to make some armor for the troops."

"Aqua plastic armor." Rankin said. "It's been a long time coming. What about that thing on its arm? Or is that its arm?"

"It looks like one of the alien weapons we have recovered. Why would someone just attach it to the Hybrid like that?"

"Dunno." Rankin said.

The pink hose of the Hybrid widened and contracted. Rankin assumed some kind of respiration was going on. Or maybe digestion. Who the fuck knew? That's what research was for.

"I hope we are able to keep up." Mahmoud said. Rankin hadn't even known that the silence, deep and thick, had been there until Mahmoud broke it.

"Me too." Petrenko said, patting him on the shoulder.

"Me three." Rankin said, thinking of his wife and three daughters.

"Me four." Donovan said. Thinking of his mistress.

[2]

February 27

They were interrogating the Gillmen now. Actually it was a female—a Gillwoman. Though damn if anyone cared enough to start calling them that.

"Can you hear us?" George Rankin asked.

The Gillmen was strapped to a table, and again it was tilted towards them. They figured out it was a female almost instantly. There high traces of a hormone so similar to estrogen that they might as well use the word itself. And when it came right down to it, the Gillwoman had a pair of tits. They weren't anything worth gawking at, they were as small as they could be while still being noticeable.

"Yeah I can hear you." the alien said.

Rankin, Donovan, Mahmud and Petrenko were speechless. It seemed like all their jaws hit the floor at the same time.

It was Donovan that found his voice first: "What…the _fuck_ did you just say?"

"Stop swearing." The Gillwoman said. "I've got ears don't I? I said I can hear you."

"Do...?" Rankin began, and then shut up. He was about to ask it (her) if she did indeed have ears. Obviously it did, and vocal cords to.

Mahmud found his voice third: "What are you?"

"I'm a foot soldier." the Gillwoman said. "Not a very good one apparently. Captured on my first mission. Life is full of surprises, is it not?"

More stunned silence from the scientists. This time, it only lasted about thirty seconds.

Petrenko nudged Rankin, telling him to continue.

"What is your name?"

"Vera Price, 94929."

Rankin blinked at her. "Uh…can you say that again?"

"Vera Price, 94929."

"What's with the numbers?"

"All Members have identification numbers." the Gillwoman said.

"Members?"

The Gillwoman said nothing.

"Members of what?"

The Gillwoman did not answer.

"Members of what?" Rankin repeated.

The Gillwoman looked away. "I've said all that I can."

Rankin's eyes narrowed. "I don't believe that."

She met his eyes, and he felt strange warmth rush over his body. The Divers had talked about how the Gillmen had no pupils, but they did. This one did at least, and they looked strangely and utterly human.

"I really can't say anything." the Gillwoman said, and her tone was pleading. Rankin adjusted his uniform. He was sweating all of a sudden.

"Why can't you?"

"I told you, I'm a soldier." she said. "But that's _all _I am. We aren't briefed on missions; we aren't debriefed when they are done; we are told to follow the orders of the squad leader, and that's the first thing. We are to protect the other crew on board the craft. That's the second thing."

"Are you taking notes of this?" Rankin turned to Mahmud.

"Uh…I have the notepad sir." Donovan said.

"Well hurry up and take some damn notes!" Rankin said shrilly.

Donovan waited for Rankin to turn back to the alien. Then, he rolled his eyes.

[3]

It went on for a good two hours, though, to the scientists, the time seemed so much shorter.

They learned that the alien computers were called learning arrays. They were communication centers of each ship, and that was their second function. Their second function was information download. It was from the learning arrays that combat training and tactics were wirelessly given to Soldiers. It wasn't just for them either—all the crew could be given information from the learning arrays.

The technicians were the ones who oversaw both the learning array and the ships engines.

Vera was asked if she could tell them anything about the engines.

She could not; as she'd told them already, she was only trained for combat. They would have to talk to a designated Fabricator if they wanted to know more about the engines.

It was revealed, to their horror, that the learning array process was two-way. The arrays could upload information from a brain to the computer, but it required that the host had a MC Implant.

What was MC?

Vera Price didn't know. She knew it was an abbreviation, but not what it stood for. She knew it had to do with something for how they used their equipment. Beyond that, she was blank. The other Members were just fond of using the abbreviation.

How do you use their equipment?

By telling it to do what they wanted it to.

Rankin paused, not understanding. He asked her to clarify.

Vera Price just repeated what she said: by telling the equipment to do what they wanted it to.

Rankin still didn't understand.

The Gillwoman talked slowly, as if to a child: they _thought_ orders in their head…and the equipment followed the orders they thought in their head. It was just like giving a dog orders, except the dog was hearing your thoughts instead of hearing your mouth.

So it was like telepathy?

Vera Price didn't know what that was.

Could Vera talk about the weapons that her "Members" used?

Holy shit, could she ever. To start with, the aliens' weapons made use of sonic energy. Not every single one did, but most of them did. At the beginning of the year, they were equipped mainly with sonic pistols. Both the pistols and their power clips took the least amount of time to make. Each pistol clip contained twenty shots. She knew from experience—by which she meant learning array download—that they did devastating damage to both soft targets.

Rankin corrected her by saying they were technically "magazines" and not "clips."

Vera Price told him that was interesting and everything but she didn't honestly care.

Hector Donovan laughed.

Natasha Petrenko joined him.

They weren't even _magazines_ really. They were power cells. Batteries.

As the Occupation continued, the sonic rifle had begun to be deployed. The weapon was significantly more accurate than the pistol and its shots much more powerful. It had fifteen shots instead of twenty though, as the battery could make a stronger charge than the pistol clip but fewer of them. It was give and take.

There was also the sonic pulser, their grenade weapon. It also used sound energy, and could be thrown on land. Underwater, the pulsers had a motor system that guided it forward like a very slow torpedo.

Where the Members planning on making stronger weapons than that?

It was a silly question. Of course they were. Weren't humans constantly trying to make stronger weapons?

Rankin gulped, and thought he heard the rest of the scientists do the same.

Why were they invading our world?

The Gillwoman did not know, but laughed.

What was so funny?

What was so funny was Rankin claiming the planet belonged to humans. It didn't. At least, that's what the squad leaders said. The Civilization was there long before even hairy apes were around, let alone the hairless ones. No offense.

"None taken." replied Rankin, knowing the alien woman would probably be dead within two weeks. Not that she needed to know that.

[4]

February 28

George Rankin, said to himself: "There. Done."

He was in the main laboratories. In front of him was his work desk, twelve feet long and five feet wide. He was staring at a computer. After working at it on and off for most of the month, the blueprints for the aqua plastic armor were done and done…and done. All that was left was to print them. Carl Yamata and the rest of his ilk would already have access to the file in about thirty seconds. Rankin liked to print out the blueprints and go over the steps of the things they researched. In this case, the joints would be a point of interest.  
"I think I've earned myself a drink." George Rankin said, and then laughed. He walked over to his secondary desk in the corner of the room. He opened one of the drawers, and in it was a flexible cooler with nothing in it but diet Mountain Dew. Rankin loved the shit out of diet Dew.

Rankin took a long swallow. Burped. Laughed a second time. He echoed the words he himself had said when introducing the rest of the peons to the laboratory. "No drinking in the labs people. We don't want high fructose corn syrup spilling all over the equipment, now do we?"

He laughed again, and took another drink. It was two in the morning.

[5]

Three hours later, Carl Yamata and Carrie Ulrich were in front of tables of their own tables in the workshop. Like those of the labs, the tables had computers; but unlike those of the labs, the computers were wirelessly linked to fabrication machines beside the table.

The machines were bending poles that jutted out of the ground. At their tips were fat tubes that could rotate left and right. Numerous different tools could come from them: buzzsaws, welding torches, the pliers, drills.

The aqua plastics were quite malleable. Very malleable. You didn't need heat, like you did with most metals. Nor did you need highly acidic compounds like "royal water" to melt them. All you needed, to make an analogy, was a hammer and a nail.

Even though he was happy to be making this new piece of equipment, Carl Yamata frowned. It didn't make sense that this shit could take multiple shots from even a single torpedo—even a small Ajax. It was plenty strong, sure, but it didn't strike him as THAT strong.

As Carrie and Carl worked, the torso of the aqua plastic armor became a torso, upper arm and thighs.

"Damn. It's looking good." Carl said.

"You got that right."

The feet and hands were attached. Then the helmet, which was a thin layer of aqua plastic. Even that very thin layer was stronger than Kevlar, though Yamata doubted it would survive a direct blast from a rifle.

"Done." Carrie Ulrich said. She moved away from the computer, moved toward the table, and stared down at the armor. Her eyes were wide, as though it were a newborn baby.

Carl whistled to her. "Carrie. I need you back over here. We got one down and about two dozen more to go."

"Do we have enough aqua plastics to do that?"

"Right now we got 250 units. We should be good."

"Should be good?"

"I hope so." Carl Yamata said.

[6]

As I said before, nothing much happened for the rest of the month.


	16. Pt 2: Ch 12--Captain's thoughts

Captain's thoughts

AN: I thought you guys needed an update. It's been a month since I've given you guys something. Here goes. This is mostly exposition with no dialogue or action. Skip it if you don't like it. Believe me, I understand. =).

[1]

March 1, 2040

Captain Joe Vargas was smiling. There was a tune going through his head. He couldn't remember the name of the band, only that he'd heard it when eating at a Mexican restaurant over in Maine.

"Come on, take the money and run." Vargas whispered. "Come on…take the money and run, take the money and run."

Were those the lyrics? It didn't matter; they were now.

The XCOM project hadn't gotten a great score, but they'd gotten a good score of 600. The month of January had been significantly worse, and Joe Vargas didn't even want to look at that report. A number of countries, including the US, had cut their funding. Not by a huge amount, but it didn't have to be.

For doing so well in February, all the countries except for Russia increased their funding. Quite frankly, fuck the Russian government. Just a decade ago, it didn't seem at all feasible that their government would be more full of unintelligent pricks than the United States and their president but lo and behold Vlad Putin Model 3.0. Do some saber-rattling with Euro-Syndicate? Sure why not? Not like they were fighting an alien threat and whatnot.

Vargas put his geoscape on the main screen. It wasn't a touchscreen, and he had to click and drag. The aliens weren't focusing their attacks on any one area. The port attack at the end of January had been the only one of its type.

Maybe the aliens realized they were better off fighting underwater.

Yes, that made the most sense. According to Rita Mendoza, their recruit over at Sea Metro, and other police reports, laser weaponry worked plenty well on these creatures. The Aquatoids took two shots at the most from laser rifles. Gillmen were much hardier—at least four shots. A heavy laser could down them in one shot.

The gas technology had been quickly outclassed. Thank God (or whoever) for George Rankin. While you were at it, thank that fucker for Carl Yamata as well. Gauss technology wasn't really better than laser technology. In some cases, it might even be worse.

For starters, lasers didn't need ammunition. Neither clips nor magazines, which means a soldier didn't need to have said things weighing him down when he went into battle. Towards the late-middle of the war, the basic equipment of a trooper was this: one laser rifle, two or three alien grenades, and one med-kit. Strong troopers got heavy lasers.

The gauss weapons certainly had ammunition limits. To that end, the firearm training stressed the importance of using well aimed shots, especially out in the open. The gauss rifles only had average accuracy and an average rate of fire. But it only had fifteen rounds, and you'd run dry after only seconds of fully automatic fire.

The accuracy of the pistols was low, while the rate of fire was extremely fast. A particularly careless (or stupid) Diver could empty his whole magazine in perhaps two seconds…and not hit anything in the process.

Gauss ammunition was cheap and quick to produce. That was no excuse when there was a limit to how much shit you could put in the Triton. The last thing a Diver needed to be doing was running out of ammo in the field because he or she treated their gauss gun like it was a laser.

"Well aimed wins the race." he said to himself.

[2]

He looked at the stats for the Divers. Commander Laura Dreyfus was top of course, but others had potential to be just as good as her, if not better. Most of them women—funny.

They formed a trinity of sorts. Rachel Henderson was the best shot. Tanya Olsen was insanely strong. And Laura…well she was just Laura.

Claude Drefyus: not a sniper.

What he lacked in firing accuracy, he made up for in speed. He was a fucking dolphin. What did it matter if you couldn't shoot that well if you simply swam up to the alien and clicked your gun until the thing was dead.

And he didn't let himself get caught out in the open either, dancing through and around coral reefs and other objects. When he'd come in, his stamina had been clocked at around 68. Above average at most. Now it was around 90. He could swim laps around everyone else—his sister included. He had some of the best reactions too, at 85. He was not a sniper. He was a scout.

Due to that, he was a high priority for the plastic armors. When they got heavy armor (and Vargas had no doubt that they would) Claude would probably be one of the first. If not THE first.

Clarita Mendoza would bear watching. These were her stats from the Battle Zone:

Firing Accuracy: 89.

Throwing Accuracy: 72.

Stamina: 46

Strength: 32

Reactions: 80.

There were few Divers that came into the XCOM project with as much prior alien-killing skill as Rita Mendoza. Simply put, no Divers came into the program with an 80 in anything.

Some of her shots could best be described as "nightmarishly accurate" and her gun could snap on target in an instant. Everyone at Sea Metro was talking about her shot against a laterally-swimming Aquatoid heading for its sub.

Her weakness was that she ran out of steam easily in the field. She ran fine, that wasn't the issue. The issue was that she couldn't swim that well and bad technique usually meant faster fatigue as sure as shit.

"She's got promise. That's all anyone can ask for."

There'd been plenty of stinkers. Mostly they'd been kept on rather than fired. It was too costly to keep firing and hiring in new people. One was Burnell. He was narcissistic and obnoxious and loud. He complained when he did poorly at the Battle Zone games, which was practically all the time.

He was too out of shape to talk shit about anyone to their face. When he went missing during his first mission, nobody in Sacred Tear had really cared. Not even Claude, and Claude cared about everybody.

There was another guy, went by the name Dale Rolento. Rolento had the "honor" of being the only Diver fired in the XCOM project. Rolento was opposite of Burnell in appearance—tall and black and built instead of pale and stocky. He was a mirror of Burnell in personality. He swore at the other players in the Zone, said that they were terrible, and then lost to those players in the Zone. He rage quit matches that he was losing, and then insulted other Divers if they didn't want to play him, calling them cowards.

One day he trash talked Tanya Olsen. She trash talked him back. He threatened her, saying, "This is real life."

Two days later, he was escorted out of Sacred Tear. Both his arms were broken and one of his legs. On one cast was the word: SCRUB.

No great loss.

[3]

Captain Vargas wondered.

What was the alien goals? Enslavement?—taking up human chattel so they'd have something expendable to do the heavy lifting for their most dangerous jobs? Looting?—stealing every single resource the planet has and then moving on, in the vein of the Vasari from Sins of a Solar Empire (something the kids were playing even today).

Or maybe they were like the Seekers from the Advent Trilogy.

Maybe they just wanted the extinction of the entire human race.

In the First Alien War, The Alien Brain had tried to bargain for its life. It had mentioned some unseen threat. Something that it was trying to prevent. The human kidnappings and experiments—they were part of a plan to build up a powerful army of psychics.

The Alien Brain had been lying. Otto Zander had been sure of that, and so was Joe Vargas. The New Threat was supposed to come in around ten years. Like the previous aliens, the New Threat was supposed to come from space.

That hadn't happened, their new enemy had come from below. Like in that old movie Pacific Rim.

"Giant fighting robots. Now that would be cool." Vargas said.

"Captain." Sacred said over the intercom.

Joe Vargas clicked the button next to his computer. "What is it Sacred?"

"Lots of reports coming in about alien subs."

"What else is new?"

"Two of them were shot down over the Sea of Japan. Escorts. But it cost a squadron of fighters, even though they were armed with laser cannons."

"Anything else?"

"Nothing of any note," the head sonar officer said. There was a sudden alarm on Sacred's side.  
"What is it Sacred?" the captain asked.

What the man said next made Joe Vargas sit up in his chair: "We've got a medium submarine."


	17. Pt 2: Ch 13--Threesome

Threesome

**AN: Sorry. It's been a while. Writing two real books, and not just Fan Fiction. Another interception battle for you guys.**

[1]

March 2, 2040.

The blip was off the coast of Ghana. From Western Africa, there'd been reports of light going out.

Angler pilot Rainbow was sent after it. It took her perhaps twenty minutes to get there, but by the time she had, there was nothing at all to see.

She patrolled the western coast of the continent for the better part of four hours. Along the way, she encountered a ship going from South Africa to Liberia. She was given by Sacred permission to hail it.

It was a cruise ship, or so the comms. officer (a perk little shit who called himself Hanson) claimed. It was a dinky size for one, looking more like a tugboat. Even the standard "Radiance-class" Royal Caribbean cruise liners dwarfed it a hundred times over. Sixx was half-tempted to bring it up, poke the officer a little bit about it.

_What the fuck is wrong with me?_

Nothing wrong. She was just still pissed off about her brush with death, and having to get bailed out by Jordan.

_"__Just so you know…" _the comms officer said cheerfully, _"We aren't really a cruise ship. We're a drug ship. We sell Jesus juice."_

"Oh shut the fuck up!" Rainbow laughed.

They let each other on their way. Rainbow's grin faded, thinking of the _Oasis of the Seas _being split in half. She looked at the tugboat in her in her rearview monitor, half-expecting it to blow up as she looked at it.

It didn't.

Rainbow swam the Angler back to Sacred Tear.

[2]

George Rankin started research on the craft gauss cannon. The gauss weapons, so far had proven to be effective in the field. Perhaps not as strong as lasers, but that didn't matter at this point. The coil guns could be fired underwater and lasers could not.

If they could start fitting some of the things on their Anglers, XCOM could completely win the naval superiority aspect of the war. Torpedoes, much like missiles, could be dodged by the smaller alien subs. An upgraded version of the basic cannon would take care of that—in triplicate.

When that was done, it would just be a matter of fitting the thing on the Coelecanth weapon system.

[3]

March 5

There was another good sized blip to the north. 400 miles off the coast of Maine. Over there, a boat _was _sunk. At least, it was sunk as far as Jordan Year was concerned. He was sent over that way with Timothy Young.

"I can't wait to try this shit out." Young said.

"This shit" referred to the DUP head torpedo launchers.

"Take it easy Twister." New Year said. "They haven't even bought us dinner yet."

Young's voice came out clearly confused even over the radio. "What?"

New Year shook his head. "Never mind."

"Why does everyone call me Twister anyways?" Timothy Young asked.

"Who the fuck knows. Let's find the tango."

They searched all over the New England coast, but came up with nothing.

"Shit, that's such bullshit." Twister said. New Year could hear the sadness in his voice, and felt a touch of anger at the newbie. What the hell did he have to be disappointed about? That they have anything shooting at them?

The shooting wouldn't happen for another three days.

[3]

March 6

Sea Metro had an Angler now—two Ajax torpedo launchers and a gas cannon. The man went by the name Donnie Laskie. He looked a lot like Jake Gyllenhaal so instead of his last name Laskie he was called Darko.

Darko was sent out towards Australia, where there'd been _something _off the western coast of the giant island. A big blip. Well…big compared to the ones they'd been getting throughout the war.

"You'll be okay Darko." he talked to himself. This was his first patrol, and he was nervous as all fuck. His muscles were drawn tight and rigid. There was a joke in there somewhere…but it really wasn't that funny.

He checked the sonar. Nothing.

"You'll be okay." He repeated. Knowing that he might not. He was from Auto City, in Florida. His cousin had died in the terror attack, a blast removing most of his intestines and putting them on the wall behind him. That could be Darko, dying a slow death calling out for the mercy of Almighty God. Only instead of leaking out his vitals on pavement, he'd be leaking out vitals into the harsh and uncaring ocean. Drowning at the same time.

And now, of course, he actually heard the voice of God. The Man spoke to Darko in a soothing voice. A voice of velvet and wine.

_Take her easy son. Don't fret about things you can't control. I don't. _

Darko frowned. The sub's joystick trembled in his hand.

_Your Nathan dying. That was part of my Plan, as All is._

"But he was my family." Darko said. "I loved him."

_As did I._

"Then why didn't you prevent his death?"

_It was not my death to prevent._

Darko didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing. He kept on patrolling. The Australian coast was only thirty miles out.

A blip on the sonar. From the west, three minutes away.

"Let's get to it God."

[4]

He saw it through his zoom cam.

It would be a cliché to say his breath was taken away. It wasn't. He wasn't even able to draw breath in the first place. His lungs were rigid and burning.

_It could be worse, _God said.

That helped Darko breathe again. But his breath was ragged and frantic. As well it should be.

And God was right. It was quite large but it didn't have shit on the battleships and terror ships from 40 years ago.

"Yeah, it could be worse." he answered. "But I can't kill this thing on my own."

Maybe if he had DUP torpedoes instead of the smaller Ajaxes. And _maybe _if all of the DUP torpedoes hit.

Maybe.

But he only had a pair of Ajax launchers and a gas cannon. The former would do some damage. And the latter? It was just a step above pulling down his pants and pissing in the direction of the USO.

"Sacred, this is Angler 4."

_"__Go ahead 4."_

"I've got contact with the enemy USO. It appears to be a medium-sized craft. It is two stories tall. We are at shallow depth." Darko leaned in his chair. "I'm closing with it."

_"__Negative, 4. Retreat to standoff range."_

"Copy that Sacred." Darko replied, with immense relief. He leaned back in his seat. He was sweating all over. "But what about the USO? Am I getting reinforcements?"

_"__Affirmative. We have both your coordinates and the coordinates of the USO. Angler's from Sweet Lime are en route._"

Darko blinked, not sure he heard the previous words correctly. "Sweet Lime? What the fuck is Sweet Lime."

Sacred replied with a tone of obvious pride. "Our third base."

[5]

Specifically a strike base.

It had only a single living quarters, and a cramped one at that. It had no Battle Zone under the quarters. It had a general stores for storing craft ammunition and nothing else. There were no scientists working at labs, no technicians moving mechanical arms in workshops.

There _was _a short-range sonar…or at least it would have one in twenty more days. That meant its Anglers, 5 and 6, was the only pair of eyes the base had for the surrounding waters.

Angler number 5 was piloted Jillian Tuck, who was mildly hungover and had been inching herself towards drunk when the alarm sounded.

Angler 6 was piloted by Lindsey Perez, whose brother was a Diver over at Sacred Tear.

Perez was not hungover, nor was she drunk, though she was buzzed. She was nineteen. If tested, she would've tested positive for nicotine and pot. She'd had a bottle of Green Dragon in her barracks, and had nip of it before going to bed. Pot might've aggravated others, but right now she felt chill as fuck.

_ "__I'm so fucking pissed off."_ Jill Tuck said. She sounded pissed. That was perhaps one of the reasons that the crew over at Sweet Lime (a skeleton crew of no more than fifteen people) called her Ripper.

Addie's voice was even, nearly toneless. "Why?"

_"__That fucking prick Johnson had us suit up before I could get at the Cabin Fever."_

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Perez wasn't really sorry at all. But anything to make her friend feel better. The skeleton crew called her "Cutter." God only knew why. She'd never cut anything in her life that wasn't a chocolate cake.

_"__That's alright."_ Ripper's tone changed almost immediately. She sounded nearly as chill as Cutter was. Though that wasn't possible. "I've got a shot bottle of scotch here in my lap. This shit is awesome."

Cutter wanted to change the subject. "I'm armed with two DUP launchers."

_"__How many rounds?"_

"These are standard DUP launchers. Not an upgraded one like they have over at Sacred Tear." Cutter said. "It's got three torpedoes each. You?"

"_I've got two Ajax launchers."_ Ripper said. _"Also standard. Six shots. I also got a gas cannon. Two hundred rounds."_

"Two hundred spit wads you mean."

Ripper barked laughter. It was harsh laughter, but not unpleasant.

"Whaddaya think?" Cutter asked. "We got this?"

_"__Fuck no."_

They both laughed.

[6]

The USO was heading north, toward Japan; toward Cutter and Ripper and away from Darko.

When they closed within 100 km, the USO abruptly turned around. It was heading toward Darko now…and opening fire.

The first couple shots were close. Much too close. One of them winged the right side of the cockpit very slightly making it shiver.

A thin crack—so thin it was barely visible—appeared just above the right edge.

"Taking evasive action!" And he banked to the left just as a blast came rushing toward the cockpit. He dodged it. Dodged it completely.

Barely.

More rounds came his way, he dodged them by accelerating forward, at an angle from the source. The sonic rounds of the USO's cannons traveled very fast, but the Angler was a fair distance away.

[7]

_"__We've gotta help him!" _Cutter said over the comms.

"Tell me something I don't know!" Ripper said angrily. "You close with the guy. I'll try to flank it from the sides."

They moved toward the USO. Half a minute passed.

_"__I'm already in range." _Cutter said. _"Firing!"_

Ripper was a fair distance away, so she didn't hear the thick rushing sound, but saw the projectile slicing through the waters. She followed it, unable to help it, knowing that she should be speeding up. But she watched the USO begin to turn to the right, maybe to try and evade (doubtful), or maybe to turn and engage them instead. She speed up.

But the medium USO was not agile or maneuverable. It had great speed, as all alien craft do, but only in a straight path.

The DUP torpedo tracked it easily, and it hit just as easily. Explosive light bloomed on the backside of the sub. No shrapnel came off.

Another DUP round went through the waters. Another hit. Another bloom of light.

The starboard side of the sub was facing them now.

And now Ripper herself was in range. The green cursor fell over the USO, it became red.

_Target locked, _said the computer.

"Firing."

The Ajax launchers fired at the same time. The sound was not a loud sound, and not a huge sound; but the Ajax torpedoes went toward the target. They turned tighter than the DUP projectiles, and much sooner. When they hit, the explosion was much smaller.

Ripper fired again. When the second pair of Ajax torpedoes hit, it was like a pair of yellow eyes bloomed into existence.

Then Ripper pushed on the joystick. The USO was about twenty feet above her, and she increased that difference to thirty. She was aiming to go under it, as it was turning around.

She had to be quick though. If she was still in the arc of its bow-facing cannons, she probably wouldn't be able to dodge them at close range. She'd be dead.

In front of her, torpedoes were incoming.

[8]

Ripper felt a sudden pang of fright before she remembered that Darko was here with them. The torpedoes closed in on her, but they were curving up towards the USO.

Ripper was below it now, and she felt rather than saw its shadow upon her, a thick blanket that took her breath away and made her shiver.

She shook her head, clearing it. She braked the Angler and pulled up on the joystick. The craft began to flip. The bottom of the sub slid into view, a train of smooth plastic and metal that took up the entire cockpit.

She opened fire with the Ajaxes. The explosions sounded like giant fists. They rocked the sub, nearly sent it too far to one direction. Ripper had to pause to correct it, and then kept firing. Debris fell all around her. Bits of burnt plastic and the occasional twist of metal. One of them bumped the tip of her Angler, making it do a ballerina spin.

Ripper screamed. Thinking _I'm gonna die. _But she did not. The damage was moderate. The starboard fin was in the yellow now. She was far from dead. She immediately turned the Angler back on target.

The Ajax launcher in the HUD turned red. They were empty now. She switched to the gas cannon, opened fire with that. Watched as the slugs mostly bounced off the hard aqua plastic, but some of it was flaked away.

It was rocked by Ajaxes from Darko's Angler, and the rest of the DUPs from Cutter's.

Ripper had only gotten 50 cannon rounds out when it went down. _USO downed, _went the friendly computer. And the USO was trailing away from them, trailing what looked like black fuel and debris. She thought she saw the bits and pieces of an alien among them, but who could say for certain?

It went down toward an underground oil platform. For one frightening moment, Ripper thought it would crash into it, sending crude oil everywhere.

But it crashed into a slide, and the slide stopped. About twenty feet away from one of the platform catwalks.

"Everybody check in!" Ripper shouted.

_"__Cutter, still here. All green here. That thing didn't put up much of a fight."_

And there was a reason for that, but they wouldn't know for at least a day.

_"__Darko here. I took some damage, but I'm not critical. I can make it back to base. We did it guys!"_

Ripper screamed with joy.


	18. Pt 2: Ch 14--The Yellow Orb

The Yellow Orb

[1]

March 6

When the USO went down in the Indian Ocean, it was 10 pm over there. Absolutely none of the Divers over at Sea Metro were keen to the idea of raiding the crash site at night. The aliens would see fine and the humans would have their vision range cut down by half.

So they waited until dawn.

In the meantime, the Sea Metro base commander, Meridian Melokova, saw fit to purchase a Coelecanth. Captain Joe Vargas gave him the go ahead.

Another batch of gauss clips were sent over from Sacred Tear (the base over in the Atlantic). Along with them came two more rifles and a heavy gauss cannon.

[2]

The equipment detail for the Sea Metro Divers went like this:

Able Seaman Simon Samson: gauss rifle and one clip. The first of three med kits.

Able Seaman Clarita Mendoza: heavy gauss cannon and one clip. One gauss pistol with one clip.

Ensign Jerry Lee: gauss rifle and two clips. One thermal tazer.

Able Seaman Len Quade: gauss pistol and two clips. The second of three med kits.

Able Seaman Howie Henrick: gauss pistol and two clips. One thermal tazer. A magna-pack explosive.

Ensign Terry Tanaka: gauss pistol and two clips. One thermal tazer. A single magna-pack explosive. Three smoke grenades.

Seaman Jimmy Patterson: gas cannon with high explosive rounds. One clip of high explosive ammo. One gauss pistol.

Seaman Clarice Ryans: gas cannon with high explosive rounds. One clip of high explosive ammo. One clip of armor piercing ammo.

Seaman Jack Denson: gauss rifle and one clip. The third and final med kit. One thermal tazer. Two grenades.

Seaman Gary Bolt: gauss pistol and one clip. One magna pack explosive. One thermal tazer. One smoke grenade.

Coelecanth Submersible Weapon System: Aqua Jet torpedo launcher with 8 torpedoes.

[3]

"I'm scared."

Rita Mendoza looked over to the person that had said that. It was Clarice Ryans, a redhead. She had a tense, nervous voice, and that was the case regardless of the fact that they were heading toward a new danger. Clarice sounded tense and nervous all the time.

"Join the club." Simon Samson said to her. SS looked like he was dozing. Rita couldn't believe it.

"I'm not." Jack Denson said. But his voice was cracking even as he said it.

Gary Bolt laughed ruefully. Denson turned to him.

"You got something to say to me?"

"We're all afraid." Bolt said simply.

"Cut the chatter." Jerry Lee said. "I don't know why you new recruits like blabbing on the way to subs so damn much."

"They're just scared Jerry." Rita said.

"Not a single fucking person was talking to you Rita!" Jerry Lee said sharply.

Rita leaned towards him, her voice low: "You just did."

"Okay, that _is_ enough." Tanaka said. "If we spend this whole ride at each other's throats, there won't be anything left for the aliens?"

They were in the Triton, already suited up. Only you had to have a pretty loose definition of the word "suited." Rita felt naked as fuck in these worthless diving suits. Her comrades-in-arms called them "dying suits." They had _much _less protection than personal armor—it wasn't even a competition.

Rita looked around. They were making the plastic aqua armor over in Sacred Tear, but the pubes at Sea Metro had none of that shit. It was a fucking miracle that they were mostly armed with gauss weapons. And a second miracle that they had a Coelecanth with them.

"You sure the safety is on that thing?" Jimmy Patterson asked, nervously. He couldn't take his eyes off the underwater drone-tank. Whoever was piloting it at base kept moving the turret around. Sometimes the pilot even moved it up so that the turret was looking at Jimmy Patterson. It wouldn't be a problem if the torpedo were NOT already loaded, but of course they were. The light on the turret was green and not red, which meant the safety was on.

But say the light was faulty? And the safety wasn't on at all?

And the pilot pulled the trigger thinking that it would be some big joke they would all laugh at?

_Don't think about that, Rita! Don't think about dying before you even get to the site!_

The Triton shivered as they moved through a cross-current. The tank trembled on the floor. The fluorescent bulbs overhead flickered on and off. Denson noticeably recoiled. Rita thought he'd probably be the first to panic.

The Triton pilot, named Superbus, came on the radio: _"We've made it too the crash site. Get your asses ready people!"_

They put their helmets on. The holes opened up in the cabin and it slowly filled with seawater.

_"__Setting us down." _Superbus said.

[4]

They had contact immediately after the doors opened.

It was two Aquatoids, within only a couple feet of each other. The one in front had a pistol and one of those reader devices. The aliens were low, nearly touching the seabed.

For some made reason, only one was facing the craft. The other was looking off elsewhere, perhaps communicating with a comrade that none of the Divers could see.

It didn't matter.

The tank opened fire with one of its torpedoes. It cut through the water, leaving a wide trail of bubbles in its wake. It passed the first Aquatoid, its sensors detected the alien's high thermal temperature and instantly detonated.

Two alien screams filled Rita's ears and she smiled. Two dead already, before any of them were even out of the sub. That had to be good, right?

The tank moved out first of course. Its tires were retracted, and its propellers on the bottom and back were engaged. It was so loaded down with torpedoes and conventional armor that it could only _barely _float above the seabed. And it made a lot of bubbles in the process.

It got about two yards out before taking fire from above. Two shots. The first one missed. The second one grazed the front armor.

Jerry twisted around so that his body faced up. He grabbed the top of the door frame and used it pull himself out like Jack from his Box. He fired two quick shots.

"Damn it!" he cursed. "Missed."

Then he ducked to avoid a sonic bolt.

Tanaka came out of the sub, turning so that he could face up. But he didn't fire. "Where is it?"

"Went around behind the back." Jerry Lee said.

"The stern?"

"Yes the fucking stern stern, Tanaka!"

Tanaka didn't answer back. He quick went around the front of the Triton. The alien would probably be hugging the starboard side.

_If any new alien shows up, I'm a gone-fucking-goose. If that Aquatoid guesses right, ditto._

The Aquatoid didn't guess right. Or it didn't guess right at the right time. When Tanaka saw it, it was facing the stern of the Triton and then turning to look at the topside.

Tanaka aimed as carefully as he could with one hand and a body full of adrenaline. He aimed for center mass, and fired a single shot. The gun kicked more than he thought it would. The Aquatoid's mouth disintegrated. It somersaulted backwards, its limbs buckling. Clouds of orange blood caressed the Triton's starboard wall.

Tanaka radioed in. "Jerry Lee. I got him."

There was a sound over the radio that sounded like Jerry Lee smacking his lips. Tanaka didn't know whether to frown or smile at that. Jerry Lee was strong and brave but when it came to temperament, it was like you were talking to a middle schooler.

Tanaka returned to his team.

[5]

They had some breathing room now. They couldn't stay still for too long. But they could, at the very least, gauge their surroundings.

The Divers were at an oil extraction network, and a vast looking one at that. In front of them were four drills going into the seabed. They were connected each to the other by strips of metal that might've been catwalks.

Beyond that was more of the same. More drills and more catwalks.

"It's a wonder this place didn't get taken out when the USO crashed." SS said.

"Yeah, intel said the sub didn't crash from this direction." Jerry Lee said. "It crashed on the other side, and at a perpendicular angle."

"Why did Superbus set us down here?" Clarice asked.

"Probably to give a chance to clear it out before reaching the sub." Henrick said.

"Everyone spread out. Rita you stay back." Jerry Lee ordered. "Does that cannon have to be set up?"

"No." Rita said. She floated a ways above them, turning in a slow circle. Superbus had the sense to not set them down right in the middle of it all—in the "thick of it"—so at least they would have to worry about bolts of death from one direction only.

They moved up slowly. The tank went first. It still had seven torpedoes left; and it seemed like the glancing blow from earlier had done no damage at all.

The scouts, armed with their pistols and thermal tazers followed cautiously.

Rita waited, expecting that an Aquatoid would pop out from around one of the drills, its sonic weapon firing.

It didn't happen. They made it to the first line of drills unscathed. So far, so good.

_"__Move up Rita!" _Tanaka said. _"We'll cover you."_

"Roger dodger." Rita said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized how corny and stupid they sounded. Oh well.

_"__Tanaka we gotta keep moving." _Jerry Lee said. _"She can catch up!"_

_ "__We should wait for Rita." _Henrick said simply.

_"__Don't make me say it again." _

Rita rolled her eyes. Sometimes it was hard to say if she was in the underwater research division of a paramilitary group fighting aliens...or the sixth grade of a fucking public school.

She lowered her heavy gauss cannon and started swimming for the left drill. Her friend SS was there. As was Tanaka. As was Henrick.

Rita made it halfway when Clarice Ryans' shrill voice drilled into Rita's ears. _"Contact!"_

Then came the sound. A sound of cracking electricity. But that couldn't be right, if there was an electrical charge being sent underwater, wouldn't they all—

Rita saw it.

It was a large glowing orb. It pulsed with yellow light as it crawled through the Indian Ocean at an almost leisurely pace. It left a bright yellow trail in its wake. It must've been fired from the second row of drills beyond the ones her fellow Divers were at.

Rita suddenly thought of that line from The Sky Road, by Ken MacLeod (which she had finished days before). It is a line thought by the leader of Kazakhstan as she struggles to fight against the Sino-Soviet invasion of her country.

That line went like this:

_Death follows me._

The glowing yellow orb touched the side of the drill that Tanaka, SS and Henrick were hiding behind.

And the world suddenly became a wall of searing white light. Rita was swallowed in it, unable to see or react to anything. At the same time, she was rocked backwards, as though with a giant's fist.

She screamed. At least, she thought she did. Her throat worked and moved and she felt the strain. But there was no sound at all in the world—other than a painful ringing sound—as she went somersaulting back towards the unknown.


	19. Pt 2: Ch 15--Panic I

Panic I

**AN: Short chapter. Sorry. I'm writing a novel and a short story at the same time. The next chapter will be about the same size, but I want to have it out for you guys sooner.**

[1]

_"__What the fucking shit was THAT?!"_

Conrad Longfellow choked on his soda. The can of Mountin Dewshine in his hand spilled from his wet grasp and exploded on the floor.

He was in the Monitoring Booth. What was being monitored of course were the several submersible drones the XCOM project used.

Most of these drones were outside Sea Metro right now, building aqua modules for workshops and an extra general stores. Sacred Tear had a relatively shallow depth, at least for right now, but Sea Metro was fairly deep. It was easier to use underwater drones to build the facilities.

The monitoring booth was separated from the drone booths by a screen door. The booths were part of the Workshop, and not the Living Quarters. To Conrad's left, technicians were working on some damn thing. At the front doors of the workshop, a single security guard sat in a wheely chair. Armored with personal armor and armed with a laser pistol, the guard had looked mighty bored until three seconds ago.

Lenny Garrow was the operator for the combat drone, Coelecanth-One, which was currently deployed right now at the sub crash site. Lenny had just stood up in his chair, freaking out all the drone operators near him. Garth Nickles had gotten so startled that he'd fallen over in his chair, and hit his head on the booth doorway. His iced coffee was currently dribbling out through the door

"Lenny, what the hell is wrong with you?" Conrad said sharply.

The drone operator who had fallen, Billy, only groaned.

"Did you see that Connie." Lenny asked. He sounded terrified.

"Uh...not exactly."

"Are you kiddin' me? You were supposed to be watching my cam with me."

"I know but..." Conrad ran a hand through his curly hair. He'd been watching drone 2, one of the Minnow Construction units. Minnow 2 was not outside, but about to be dumped through a small airlock in the workshop, but until that point was giving Conrad a pretty damn good look at Beth Packard. Packard was a good technician, but she was also a fucking fox, with a curly (but small) afro and nice curves and black skin that gave Conrad jungle fever.

"Well sync into my cam and look at this shit."

Conrad clicked on Lenny's screen with his mouse. His mouth fell open.

"I gotta get Commander Meridian on the horn!"

[2]

At first, Rita thought that she'd been sleeping, and sleeping for a long time.

She came to, and it took her a long moment to process what she was seeing. She was looking at a bright curtain.

_I'm underwater._

Yes she was. She was looking up at the surface.

She looked around.

[3]

Clarice Ryans came to, and she found herself staring at a dark orange object.

_What? What's going on?_

Her mind was foggy, and dark fingers poked at the edges of her vision.

She turned around. The world was nothing but dust and smoke. How did that kind of shit work underwater?

_You're thinking about that now? _

Ryans placed one hand on the mining equipment she was propped up against.

"The fuck?" she whispered. Her voice had no strength at all.

She activated her radio. "Guys?"

No answer.

"Guys?! Hello!"

Nothing.

Out from the dust cloud, a stick appeared. Ryans stared at it. It wasn't a stick. It was a human arm.

_My fucking God._

Fear began to take her. Her heart began to race. Her breathing became rapid.

She turned her head? What was that? A sound?

Ryans turned, her gas cannon leveled. It came from the direction of the impact.

Damn, if an alien engaged her at this close a range.

"ID yourself!" she called out.

No answer.

Fear rose up in her chest.

"Come on!" she shouted. The tears were very close. "You'd better start shouting before I shooting!"

Movement in the Clouds. She saw a glimpse of red.

"Fuck!" she cried shrilly. She screamed so loud she wouldn't be able to talk above a whisper for the rest of the mission.

She pulled the trigger, aiming a bit more to the left than she should have. To her right was a line of drills—even if she couldn't see them—and she didn't want to hit them and cause another huge explosion.

The cannon round missed sailed into the obscuring cloud. It didn't hit anything. Not even a faraway surface. There was not even a distant explosion.

_Maybe it will go sailing off into the sunset and end up saving a guy about to get eaten by a shark. Butterfly Effect. Oops, forgot we are underwater. We'll call it the fucking Minnow Effect. _

Ryans laughed shakily, tears gathering in her eyes.

More sounds, this time from behind her.

Moving on pure octane terror now, Ryans spun around. There was an alien behind her, and there was no doubt at all it was an alien. Its eyes glowed a fierce red. It raised its gun, and the.

Ryans fired on reflex, knowing two things. One: if the alien was too close, she'd be killed regardless. The explosion from the gas cannon would kill her too, seeing as how she was more or less naked in the Diving Suit. Two: if it was a good distance, and she missed, she'd be dead. The gas cannons had a two second-delay between trigger pulls. It was meant as a failsafe.

The first round missed.

_That's it! I'm fucking dead._

Red markings lit up in the fog. A sonic bolt came out from it. It missed her helmet by bare inches. It had an _unpleasant _effect on her head, making her dizzy. She'd used the bathroom beforehand, but she was pretty sure she'd made wee-wee in her pants.

She fired again. This time it went straight at the red markings. Boom. The alien screamed out in pain and fright. Ryans heard none of it. She kept on firing. The gas cannon grew hot in her hands. The HE rounds blew apart the ground in front of her. The sounds—_WHOOMP! WHOOMP! WHOOMP!—_were like a giant striking the ground in anger.

Her gun was empty. She was afraid to take the time to reload it, but she had no choice. After that was done, it occurred to her that she'd used up half her ammunition one a single target.

Another sound. She spun around. A form materialized out of the dust cloud behind her. Not a drifting limb or a weapon, but a full-bodied figure. She tensed, her finger put a pound of pull on the trigger.

It was a person. She was able to recognize the Diver by the helmet. She relaxed. The red she had seen before the alien was merely the thermal tazer on his back. Ryans felt fucking stupid, but relieved.

It was Gary Bolt. She waved to him. Then remembered they were in a battle and kept her head on a swivel.

Bolt swam up to her. "What the shitting Christ was that?"

Ryans looked at him. His face was ghostly white, his eyes wide.

"I dunno." Ryans said. "And I don't want to guess."

"You seen Dozer?"

"You mean Rita?" Ryans asked. "No."

"Fuck."

"What about the rest of them?"

"Most of them are okay."

"Who's dead?"

"We need to find whatever fired that fucking glowing torpedo thing. You think it's a terrorist? Maybe our tank can take it out."

"Bolt." Ryans said. "Who's. Fucking. Dead?"

Bolt stared at her. For much too long.

"Tanaka. Simon Samson. Howie Henrick. I saw Tanaka's head floating around. A piece of his head."

Ryans turned as rigid as stone. She felt her muscles clench so tight she thought her whole body would shatter.

In the distance, came the sound of gunfire. Gauss fire. She could see the red bolts traveling through the fog. But their light was small, like the twinkling of distant stars.

Then that sound...

That awful fucking sound...

As another glowing orb was fired. It went through the water, through the fog, like a beacon. Ryans braced herself for the explosion.

And the world was enveloped in white light yet again.


	20. Pt 2: Ch 16--Panic II

Panic II: Firing Lines

**This is going to be a big author's note: **

**Been a year, right? Since I started this? I wish I could say time flies...but of course it doesn't. For the readers, thank you. This project, being fan fiction, is just for funsies. XCOM is a great series, but it isn't the most popular game when it comes to fan fiction. **

**I don't expect a huge amount of followers. I don't expect a huge amount of reviews.  
All I hope is that someone is being entertained.**

**But this is turning out to be a long story. It was supposed to have maybe two or three other parts after "Gauss and Plastics." They were supposed to be "Mechanical Control", "A Strange City."**

**That's fine and everything, but I realized a long time ago that length=/=good. I'm starting to think that I might need to take the route of that other Terror from the Deep story "Elemental Saga" which was published over a decade ago (you'll find it on the very last page of XCOM stories). I'm thinking I might have to abbreviate the story. You know, skip the yapping and flapping and cover the main courses. **

**We already got the first fight with harpoon guns and other craptastic stuff. We already got the early terror mission. The main fights after this are alien colonies, ship terror missions, and artefact sites—all before T'Leth. I think I already said I was not going to do any more land missions, as I want the setting to remain underwater. **

**Molecular Control doesn't get researched properly until Tasoths (which SHOULD be called Deep Ones) show up. The only important interrogations before that are Deep Ones (which should be called Hybrids), and maybe a Lobsterman Commander if you can get one then. **

**Also important, are Calcinite and Gillmen corpses for drills (why, when they aren't related, the game doesn't explain). All other aliens are pointless. Aquatoid MC units won't give you MC. Their medics will even screw you over if they "randomly reveal" the Deep One interrogation. God bless friggin' short development cycles.**

**So yeah abbreviation of the story? I think so.**

**But let's just get our plucky young Divers through the medium submarine first right? **

[1]

Terry Tanaka, Howie Henrick, and Simon Samson were dead.

Denson, Quade, Jimmy Patterson and Jerry Lee were not.

They had taken cover at the left-most drill, which wasn't currently active. Since it wasn't drilling, they'd been able to hear the first alien torpedo (they knew at once it was that) before it detonated.

The explosion had knocked them a ways north, but not much. Jerry Lee and Len Quade drifted the farthest; they were the closest to the blast without being inside of it. They managed to recover, holding onto one another as they slowly stopped spinning.

_Damn if this ain't romantic! _Quade thought breathlessly.

Jimmy Patterson drifted the least; he was able to latch onto one of the stability levers on the drill and managed to hold on for a good long while.

Denson was struck by a piece of shrapnel (a piece of the destroyed drill) and nearly blacked out. He managed to get his hands up in time and they were very nearly broken. If he hadn't done that, his helmet would've cracked in a dozen places, and he would drown slowly far away from home.

"Everyone!" Jerry Lee said. Much like Ryans, his comms. had been scrambled by the alien torpedo, though none of them would know it yet.

He was afraid. Badly. Adrenaline was making his heart race like crazy, and all his muscles were taut and trembling with energy.

He and Quade slowly reoriented themselves. They were a ways off from the drill they'd been using for cover, which was on the right.

He was scared. Badly. Adrenaline was making his heart race like crazy, and his muscles trembled frantically. He fancied he saw movement out in the distance—from the direction of the second line of drills—and he fired wildly.

"You motherfuckering bastards!" He shouted, not even bothering to aim.

His shots were hilariously bad. One passed the top of the drill Jimmy Patterson was hiding behind, missing it by less than a foot.

Beside him, Quade also freaked out and fired. He wasn't as good a shot as Jerry and his gauss pistol had less accuracy than Jerry's rifle.

It didn't matter. He hit the far away drill one time, and that one time was enough. The drill blew up like a bomb. And the explosion was strong too: about half as strong as the blast of the alien torpedo.

It was a loud explosion, but the screams of two dying Aquatoids was louder.

"Damn!" Jerry Lee said. "Nice shot Len!"

"Yessir!" Quade said. His voice was high and squeaky.

"We can't use the drills for cover." Patterson said. "They're just red barrels waiting to be blown up."

But even as he said it, Patterson hesitated to leave the cover and go out into the naked open.

"Wha...huh?" Denson said thickly. He was drifting upside down in the water. He immediately took fire from far away. A thick, heavy, throaty sound—one of the big sonic weapons.

_That's it, _Jerry thought. _Now he's going to be split in two._

But he wasn't split at all: the shot was a wide miss.

They wouldn't be getting too many of those from the aliens. Jerry instantly swam out to Denson.

Patterson, meanwhile, spied another alien. This one a Gillmen. This Gillmen was armed with a large drill like device in one hand and a grenade in the other. He might've thrown it, but hesitated, he opted to retreat to the left, into the smoke of the drill Quade blew up.

Patterson fired three times. All shots missed.

There was an explosion off to Patterson's right.

There was a sharp, hissing, crackling sound. One that made Jimmy Patterson scream.

The yellow orb moved with a leisurely speed through the water. Patterson waited for it to head towards his position. Instead, it went straight through the spot where the middle drill had once been.

It detonated far behind their positions.

Had they been gunning for Superbus and the Triton?

[2]

The Coelecanth tank was still active. The blast had spun it away like a spinning top. The operator, Lenny Garrow, was quickly able to regain his bearings. While the first squad had been knocked to the left, the tank had been knocked back. It was a simple matter of moving forward again.

There came a shine of light in front of him. Red light. It was followed with a chirp of energy as a sonic pistol fired. It struck home, but not dead center. The tank trembled.

On Garrow's end, at base, the heads-up-display blinked off for a moment. Long enough for him to think it'd been disabled.

When it came back on, Garrow sucked in air through his teeth. The tank was already at half health. He fired. This Aqua-Jet was a complete miss, passing the alien by a wide margin.

The alien fired, coming closer as it did so. Close enough for Garrow to see it was a Gillmen.

He went into the cloud and dust of the first alien torpedo. He could see red bolts off to the left as the First Squad opened fire with their gauss weapons. There was a series of booms, varying in volume and quality.

Garrow realized too late that he fucked up. He'd closed the gap in order to have a better shot at the alien...but he'd gotten _too _close. The Gillmen smirked, raising its sonic pistols. It was dual-wielding, like a character in a video game.

Its body exploded so suddenly that Garrow jumped in his seat, banging his knee on the underside of the desk. It startled Longfellow, whom was leaning forward beside him. Longfellow recoiled, hitting his back on the wall.

The shot had come from the right. The tank turned. It was Clarice Ryans and Gary Bolt, their gas cannons smoking.

"Another one down." Ryans said. She sounded calmer, more together. She checked her comms. They had communication back. That was grand. Fuck it, that was awesome.

They immediately took more fire from the second line of drills. There were two still standing, for the aliens and for the Divers. Both teams were already starting to understand that staying next to the drills was bad news..

Jerry Lee ordered his troops forward.

"Spread out you pricks!" he shouted, and he felt his voice become raw. "I wanna see you guys spread like a whore's legs!"

So they spread out, forming a surprisingly straight firing line. Jerry Lee was farthest to the left, then Quade, then Jimmy Patterson and Jack Denson (who'd been revived by Quade's med kit). The other half of the firing line saw the tank with its torpedo launcher, then Clarice Ryans, and finally Gary Bolt was the farthest to the right.

Rita Mendoza still wasn't in sight.

[3]

Two Gillmen emerged from the left drill. They fired what sounded like sonic rifles.

Every single Diver tensed up, but they were going for the tank again. Both shots missed. The tank's torpedo launcher rotated threateningly. It fired the third of eight shots. It detonated just in front of the drill, and the explosion made the tank shiver.

Both Gillmen were torn asunder, their arms flailing out hilariously into the waters. Their alien guns went end over end.

An Aquatoid emerged from the drill on the right.

There was a sharp, hissing, crackling sound—one that made all the Divers scream.

But this shot turned out to be a miss as well. It went past Ryans and Bolt on the right, threading the needle between them. The torpedo blew up the drill they'd been hiding behind only a minute ago.

The white light disoriented them, but only for a moment, as it had also been behind them.

[4]

The Aquatoid with the torpedo launcher knew it'd made a mistake. It was reaching into its belt for something. Ammo for its gun, or maybe a grenade.

The Divers leveled their gauss weapons.

"Hold your fire!" Jerry Lee said. "Garrow! Take it out."

The tank fired four of eight torpedoes.

_Damn, _Ryans thought, _There won't be any left for us. _

Yes, there would be. This time, the Aqua Jet missed by a wide margin. It didn't detonate anywhere near the drill. It missed the top of the drill by about three yards.

[5]

"What the fuck Garrow." Conrad said from inside Sea Metro.

Garrow shrugged.

[6]

The Divers fired, but they had no better luck. The gas cannons fired by Ryans and Bolt both missed. Again, it was Quade who's shot struck the drill, and there was a burst of excitement through the ranks...followed by fear.

The last time, one shot had been enough to make the drill explode. This time it wasn't, the drill was standing, looking just fine. It didn't appear to have taken any damage at all.

The alien loaded its torpedo launcher. Jerry Lee's heart sank. _We're fucked._

Then the Aquatoid's head exploded.

Who the hell made that shot?

"Come on, people we are almost there."

It was Rita.

[7]

Who had looked down the scope of her heavy gauss as the rest of the gang was crossing he open surface to the second line of drills. She didn't have a perfectly clear shot: Ryans was slightly in the way and the drill was too. Rita wasn't close enough to have radio contact either. She was far behind even the Triton.

The scope of the gauss resembled that of a traditional sniper rifle. It has crosshairs and not a circular reticule. It had a rangefinder that could calculate the drop of the weapon in water.

Then the second torpedo hit, momentarily blinding Rita. She closed her eyes, grinding her teeth, wishing and willing her sight to clear. When she could see again, Ryans had been knocked slightly to the right, and the obscuring drill was completely gone.

There was the smoke, but it was thin smoke. Rita could see the bright red markings of the Aquatoid easily, even from this distance.

She aimed, moving the crosshair above the head of the Aquatoid.

_I aim with my eye, I shoot with my mind, I kill with my heart._

Fired.

Her mind seemed to follow the gauss bolt as it cut through the water. It began to fall, a bit more than she expected. Already it wouldn't be a headshot. Rita had just enough time to think that she'd missed. That the bullet would blow up a piece of the ground in front of the alien.

That was when the heavy gauss bolt collided with the Aquatoid's guts, which damn near blew up themselves. The Aquatoid screamed, dying almost instantly.

When she finally began to catch up with them, Jerry Lee came on the radio.

"You saved our asses Rita. Thank you."

She smiled.

But not for long.

They took the time to grab what remained of the equipment from the first alien torpedo explosion. Tanaka and Henrick's gauss pistols were still functional, as was Tanaka's ammo clip. Samson's gun was destroyed, but his ammo clip was not.

The medium sub was in sight. It was two-stories tall. Its size was perhaps a bit smaller than the Harvester of the First Alien War, and about the same size as the Abductor.

"Almost there." Jerry Lee said. He thought they would probably have the advantage at close range, especially with their pistols, which were basically submachineguns anyway. "Someone deploy a dye grenade."

It was Gary Bolt who did so, pressing the button, and letting its small gas engine propel it toward the door. It blew up just in front of the group, giving them adequate concealment.

None of them noticed the tank's odd behavior, as they were well in front of it. Jerry Lee asked Garrow to check out the rest of their immediate surroundings while the Divers raided the ship itself, and left it at that.

None of them noticed the tank's turret rotating toward them slowly and deliberately.

[8]

"What's going on now?" Garrow said.

Conrad was beside him almost immediately. "What's the problem now Lenny?"

"The Coelecanth is acting weird."

In front of him, the HUD was blinking on and off. Garrow tried moving the joystick, but the tank's hydrojets would not move, and neither did the turret.

Finally these words appeared on the screen:

REMOTE CONTROL TERMINATED...FOREIGN CONTROL GRANTED.

**Next up, Part Three**

**MECHANICAL CONTROL**


	21. Pt 3: Ch 1-Gibbs

**Part Three**  
**Mechanical Control**

_"On the table, between the chips and bowls of raw veggies, was one of Bobbi's contraptions. The batteries were hooked up to a circuit board that were in turn hooked up to an ordinary wall switch. Gardener saw himself turn this wall switch, and suddenly everything on the table—chips raw veggies, the lazy Susan with its five different kinds of dip, the remains of the cold cuts and the carcass of the chicken, the ashtrays, the drinks—rose six inches into the air and simply held there, their shadows pooling decorously beneath them on the linen."_

_—The Tommyknockers_

Intermission—Gibbs

[1]

This wasn't right.

This wasn't happening.

He wasn't in his body. His body was completely gone. He couldn't see, but he could see, and the world was a rising wall of twos and fives and there eights in between them like sprinkles on a cake. And the Numbers were blue, and they ran across his view from left to right.

It hurt...

It hurt so bad...

He could feel. His neck was at Point Nemo. His fingers were in the Gulf of Mexico. His shoulders touched the coast of Oregon. His guts sat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. His legs were near Cape Canaveral. Vessels of different shapes and sizes moved across his toes, his fingertips, his body. But not human Vessels...oh no.

He opened himself to them. His toes and tips and shoulders and neck. They went in and out of him. He breathed in and a Fleet Supply Vessel entered an immense metal door that was his mouth. The door opened with a smooth and terrible sound. The choice was not his. The Numbers made him do it. He had to obey the Numbers.

It hurt...

It hurt so bad...

The numbers in front of him raced from right to left. At times—very few times—they would cease, and the world became a long bright blackness. The Black was pure and wonderful, as sweet as midsummer nights. It would last for a second. Sometimes longer, but usually not. But he hoped.

Then the Numbers would return. Shooting from left to right so violently that it hurt again. And more doors would have to be opened. More learning arrays would be plugged into subjects. And the images sent into the Footmen made him scream.

More reanimation centers would be turned on, to reverse the hibernation process.

And it all hurt...

So bad...

If he focused, and blinked once or twice, the Numbers became pictures. A pair of eyes began to form. Big and brown. Then a large nose. Then a pair of fair lips.

Rita. Mendoza.

It was her.

He smiled at the thought of her. And somewhere in the Pacific Ocean a massive door slammed shut on a Fleet Supply Vessel as it was trying to exit it. The ship was durable, but the door weighed over 1,000 tons and clamped down with five times as much force. The sub was sliced in half, and then exploded. And twelve hours later, a big tide at hit one of the beaches of Hawaii, nearly submerging it.

He held her face in his...mind. If that's what this was.

He turned his focus outward.

And the Numbers came again, as a Vessel was constructed in a Colony in the Indian Ocean. The Numbers were red and black. The wall of Numbers in front of him was part of something larger: a trail of Numbers that went into a juncture. And from that juncture, Numbers spread out in all directions.

One of the directions led to cameras around this particular base. It wasn't a Colony, but a Relay Site. They would need to be activated in order for the Great One to awaken.

And it hurt so bad, but Rita's face made it better. He didn't think that he loved Rita. Not even now. But he had liked her. He had liked her a lot. She was tough and mean and beautiful.

There would come times when anomalies happened in the Numbers. A Vessel would go to a Sector and be engaged by what his masters called the Foreign. New Numbers would come, as evasive maneuvers were done, and sonic weapons were fired.

And there would be times like now, when there was a Vessel knocked down, touched on the sea floor. He followed the Numbers to the learning arrays of the Vessel. There wasn't too much hull damage. Only two Engineers had been killed in the crash.

He followed the Numbers to one of the Engineers fighting outside the craft. Just as he did, the Engineer was killed. A magnetic bolt had cut through the water like it wasn't even there, and the creature's Numbers were abruptly halted.

He retreated, found new Numbers. He walked them to one of the higher ranking Engineers. They were trained to see the Numbers, as he himself could.

The alien seized the Numbers of the tank. It was far behind the group of the Foreign. They did not see it. They would not know something was wrong until it was too late.

And it was.

The turret jerked erratically, then moved with an oily ease through the water.

And before it fired its torpedo, Peter Gibbons closed his "eyes."

**AN: Another short chapter. Life is busy and a pain, but what else is it supposed to be? Looking for jobs, getting a book published with these people over in New York, writing two novellas when my ass should be focusing on one. Didn't want the story to not have an update for two whole months. So here you go.**


	22. Pt 3: Ch 2--Panic III

AN: Special thanks to LukkiLewin for being my first review. We finish the medium sub NOW.

Panic III

[1]

They all heard the torpedo at the same time. Every single one of them.

They all reacted much the same way: turning around.

Gary Bolt turned around the fastest. It wouldn't matter.

The Aqua Jet torpedo went through the water even slower than the alien one. It didn't glow with any light. It left a thick trail of bubbles clearly showing that it came from their tank.

The same thought went through their heads. Through _all _of their heads. _No this isn't right. It had to be some mistake. Garrow would never._

Rita thought what she always did. _Death follows me_.

They were all too slow. Much too slow. Their minds were telling them that it wasn't real. Their bodies finally began to move, but it was like they were trapped in amber.

Rita, Gary Bolt, and Clarice Ryans moved to their left, toward the sub's right. Jerry Lee, Jimmy Patterson, Jack Denson, and Len Quade moved to their right, towards the sub's portside.

The torpedo hit the side of Jerry Lee's leg and detonated.

It knocked Rita's group into a spin; all of them were sent towards a fourth drill far to the right of the USO. Jerry Lee's group was forced into the sub's hull, bouncing against its hard surface. Jimmy Patterson broke his shoulder. He screamed out in panic and pain.

The tank fired again. This time the shot was very wide: it crashed against the hull of the USO, on its second floor.

Rita recovered first, digging one hand into the sand until she finally stopped spinning.

"What the fuck is going on?!" she shrieked.

"It's the tank!" Jimmy Patterson said. "The tank is shooting at us!"

Rita immediately started opening fire, firing two slow shots. Both struck home. The tank was jostled around, firing off another shot wildly. It touched down on the sandy floor about twenty feet in front of Jimmy and his group.

"It's the aliens!" Rita shouted. "The aliens took it over!"

Clarice Ryans fired off a gas cannon shot. "But how?! I thought the aliens could only take control of people!"

"Shut up! We gotta move into the sub. Jimmy! Quade! Jack! Move in!"

"What about us?!" Ryans asked. "Me and Bolt?!"

"Keep shooting at the tank! We won't kill it! Our guns are too weak! We gotta blind it with smoke from the explosions."

The tank fired another shot, and Rita felt the air suck into her gut and hold there. But this one missed as well. Again, it was _much _too high.

Rita aimed for the front armor, knowing even the heavy gauss rifle wouldn't do much against the Coelecanth's thick armor. If it could withstand sonic pistol shots, than anything below that would be like pissing into the wind.

But if she could crack the glass canopy, and destroy the camera behind it, _that _would be fucking awesome.

[2]

Garrow kept fiddling with the controls. FOREIGN CONTROL GRANTED kept flashing on and on. It was supposed to allow a drone pilot from Sacred Tear to take control if something happened to the Garrow himself. That obviously isn't what happened.

Because ERR kept flashing again and again in the bottom right corner, which usually meant something was jammed.  
Longfellow appeared behind him. "Enough. Shut it down."

"Don't you think I've _tried _that?"

He'd already hit emergency shutdown twice. Now: three times. It didn't do jackshit.

He couldn't see what was happening on the other side.

_I hope they're okay. I hope..._

[3]

She fired twice. Both shots missed. They hit the _tank _of course; they missed the canopy.

Bolt and Ryans fired their gas cannons, firing four shots each. The tank was soon surrounded in a cloud of dust. It wasn't extremely thick, but that hopefully wouldn't matter.

They had done some damage to it. Not enough to kill it of course. But damage meant its accuracy would be much worse.

Sure enough, it fired again (how many shots were left? Two?) and this time it didn't even hit the USO behind them.

Then there was a second explosion.

[4]

That was one of the magnapacks going off, blowing apart the front door of the alien sub.

Jimmy Patterson had set it down while Quade and the rest covered him, their weapons pointed at the door, and all of them trembling so badly that their guns wavered in the water. Jimmy's hands had been trembling as he set the time. He'd had to grab his pointing hand with his off one, pushing the buttons slowly no matter how much his squad bitched at him to hurry up. When it was done, he nearly didn't get away in time, fumbling his gun, which bounced against the USO's hull.

They backed away and it went off. Just before it did, the doors began to open. An Aquatoid was on the other side, armed with nothing but one of those strange drills.

It saw the squad, and it began to grimace. Then it hard the beeping of the magnapack and looked down. Its mouth fell open comically, and then it was nothing but fucking paste.

All of them smiled ruefully at that.

"Doors open!" Quade reported.

He turned, and then _his _mouth fell open.

"Watch out!"

The three of them split apart; an Aqua Jet torpedo cut right through the middle of their ranks. It went into the sub, touched some hard surface and exploded. The sound was oddly reverberated, seeming to travel into their bones instead of their ears. Quade thought he wet his pants at some point.

Rita, Bolt, and Ryans rushed past them.

"Come on ladies!" Rita said. "Into the fucking sub! It's not gonna raid itself."

They went.

[5]

Rita was first.

She gathered the area immediately, a wall in front of her, support for balconies on the second floor. Already she could see an alien peeking over.

It fired before she could. She couldn't dodge out of the time, she only managed a roll and slight bank to the right. The sonic bolt took her in the lower part of her arm instead of the crown of her head.

"Fuck they got me." Rita screamed. "Take cover!"

Jack Denson came in, firing three quick shots from his pistol. All of them missed. The final round smacked the Aquatoid's pistol out of its hand. The rest of the squad came in.

"Watch the balcony!" Rita said. Immediately a sharp flare of pain from her missing arm.

She hit the wall opposite the front doors. Blood seemed to go everywhere. The world began to dim, black smothered the edges of her vision.

[6]

Jack Denson and Jimmy Patterson came in. Denson fired twice from his rifle. Jimmy, had set his gas cannon down outside and fired four shots from his gauss pistol.

One of the scalped the alien. It seemed to crumple to the floor, rather than tumble away.

Len Quade came in. Already his med kit was out. "Rita!"

"I'm good!" Rita said. Her voice was cracking, and her brown face had somehow paled. She looked better than Gabe had. Miles better.

_I can save her, _Quade thought.

The rest of the group came in.

"Somebody watch the balconies." Rita shouted. How she was still talking with a missing arm was anyone's guess, but she was. "Watch these two hallways."

She was referring to the ones on either side of the wall. This main room was like a foyer.

Jimmy, Denson, and Quade got on the left side. Gary Bolt and Clarice Ryans covered the right. Ryans gas cannon was empty of HE rounds; she put in her armor piercing clip. It was her last resupply of ammunition. She would have to make all shots count now.

Quade immediately put the med kit's needle into Rita.

"What about the tank?" Ryans asked. "The door's busted open. It can fire inside."

"We have to move around the wall." Rita said thickly.

They slowly went around the wall, into the hallways. Each group was met by a door. In between them was a flight of stairs...strangely enough. On the stairs—and actually descending them—was another.

The Divers were antsy and fired first. The Aquatoid didn't even have a chance to raise its sonic rifle. It was completely shredded apart, into two, then three, then four pieces.

They fired too many shots, each of them firing four or five instead of one or two. The stairs were scorched with gauss bolts.

"Stop!" Ryans shouted. Her voice was so loud and so strong that none of the Divers believed it could've come from her.

They huffed and puffed.

Behind them, the tank fired the last of its torpedoes. One of them exploded in the USO's foyer.

"Told you guys so." Ryans said.

"Enough." Bolt said. "Who goes up the stairs first?"

They waited for someone to say something. Up the stairs they could make out some alien machinery.

Rita finally spoke up, her voice thin and distant. "Bolt. You go. Ryans, cover him."

Bolt gulped. But immediately checked his ammo and headed up the stairs. Rita would hate to lose either of them, but the mission had to be completed or else none of them would make it out alive.

"Should Rita be the one giving orders?" Denson asked.

"Should you be talking right now?" Quade shot back.

"Enough." Bolt said. "C'mon Ryans."

"Take my gauss pistol." Rita said, giving Ryans the one from her belt.

Denson asked: "What about the two doors?"

The doors flanking the stairs hadn't opened yet. They could hear a faint sound coming from the right door. Probably not an alien. But there was no way to be sure without checking.

"Denson, let's you and me check." Jimmy Patterson said.

"Fine."

[7]

"Man, Rita you took a helluva shot."

Quade's med kit had already used much of the healing charges it had started with, which was only five. Stimulants were being applied as well. Only a _small_ amount of that though. The issue wasn't that she'd gotten stunned, it was that she'd nearly _died._

A painkiller charge as well, to boost moral. Again, that was a secondary problem.

"You're getting better at this." Rita said thinly.

"The kit's doing most of the work." Quade said. He certainly wasn't getting much worse at this. That was great.

He tried not to look too hard at Rita's left arm. She'd taken the sonic bolt low in the arm, so it hadn't removed the elbow.

The kit's needle was lodged at around the elbow. He hated to do that to her but it always needed to be as close to the wound as possible.

Already it was closing up, the stump being covered by a thin—but strong—wall of nanomachines and aqua plastics. She would make it.

He looked into her eyes. He was taken aback by the warm and frank manner that she looked at him. He was self-conscious, scrawny and white. He had moppy, curly black hair. He looked sort of like a Harry Potter that could play the guitar.

"You remind me of someone."

[8]

The left door first. Denson was greeted with nothing but a huge cloud of dust and particles. The room was a narrow corridor. It was a mess: a big pile of twisted metal and aqua plastics and a lot of it had actually fused to the walls without breaking them. Dust was pouring out through an open wound in the backside of the ship. Or was it the front?

Denson shook his head. None of that bullshit mattered. What mattered was that the place looked clear. The dust was vast, covering the room, but not very thick. The majority of it had already gone outside.

He sighed. Relieved.

Then he heard sonic shots from the next room over.

[8]

Jimmy Patterson was greeted by a sonic blast that took out a sizable chunk of the doorway on his left. He immediately took cover on the right edge of the doorway.

Just before he went all the way in, he saw the important features: the Aquatoid in the middle of the room, and the ion accelerator's hugging the right wall.

Wait? What?

The ion engines were fucking intact?

On a crashed submarine.

This was like those two guys from the El Dorado movie finding fucking El Dorado.

They needed to get those fuckers intact. Not just for research but for money. They would sell as well as UFO power sources from the First Alien War, partly because that was what they were.

Jimmy Patterson tried to pop out, fire quickly, but he was sent back to cover without firing a shot. As he did so for the second time, he got the important feature: the alien was moving towards him, its eyes blood-red, its sonic pistol held straight out, its markings glowing red.

Jimmy waited for a pause in the firing, but the alien just kept at it, emptying its clip.

He didn't know how many shots a sonic pistol had compared to their rifle. Maybe it would be less, like what the plasma pistol was to the plasma rifle.

Or maybe it would be more, like XCOM's gauss pistol to their rifle.

In three seconds, he would be dead and it didn't matter.

And Len Quade and Mendoza were in the hall behind him. Many of the bolts—too many—were marking the wall next to them.

"Fuck it!" He popped out from the doorway's edge and nearly fired his gun. A gunshot was five pounds of pull on the trigger and he put in three—maybe four. A pound more and Denson would've died.

Because instead of seeing an Aquatoid race towards him, glowing, Jimmy instead saw it somersaulting towards him, the entire right half of its face sheared away as if with a large cutting tool. Its orange blood flowed freely and Jimmy thought he could see flecks of blue matter that might've been brain.

Denson was behind it, at the end of the hallway, his rifle smoking. He'd come through a door or hole at the opposite end of the hallway; the alien had not seen him at all. He looked extremely pleased with himself.

Jimmy huffed and puffed. He was terribly relieved.

"Next time, aim for his ass." Jimmy Patterson said, smiling. "We'll call the fuckers Terashell."

"What, what; in the butt!" was all Denson said.

They both howled with laughter.

[9]

The bridge had:

Two rotating orbs on silver cylinders. Gary Bolt thought it was probably the Magnetic Navigation.  
One of those learning array computers on the right side.

Two smaller monitors that none of the Divers had ever seen before.

Two doors on the far side of the area, next to the balcony.

There was an Aquatoid there, looking down. Down at Quade and Rita probably, and ready to fuck their shit up.

Gary Bolt fired four quick shots with his pistol. The first missed; the second glanced the left leg; the final two missed.

The alien cried out in pain. It quickly spun around and began to warm up its sonic rifle.

Bolt fired two more shots. Both missed. The sonic rifle fired. It sailed toward him and Bolt thought, _I'm fucking dead. _

The bolt cut through the waters and smashed right into the learning array computer on his left, knocking him a bit to the right.

The Aquatoid adjusted its aim.

Ryans fired four shots. Two of them struck legs. The Aquatoid pitched forward, as if tripped. The sonic rifle discharged right into the floor. And it hadn't been expecting the recoil, the gun spun out of its hands.

It retreated for the door on the left. Bolt and Ryans fired three shots. Three of them struck home. The Aquatoid was sent shoulder-first into the balcony, and tumbled over it.

From below, they could hear Quade's shout of surprise.

"Well if he wasn't doing it..." Ryans said. "_I'd _be doing it."

"Rush the doors." Gary Bolt said. "Get out your freezer."

They both swam for the doors as fast as they could, their thermal tazers glowing with faint blue light.

It turned out that rushing them was a good idea: an Aquatoid came out of the port door, Ryans' side.

Her mouth fell open. It was armed with one of those alien torpedo launchers. From such a close distance, it seemed to swallow up the whole creature with its size.

Ryans had time to think, _No way will that fucker fire that thing in here._

But it raised the launcher and its eyes glowed red and she knew that it would. Why not? If it destroyed the ship, that would keep XCOM for cleaning it out for resources and technology.

She raced toward it, thrusting out with the tazer. The launcher started to glow, the muzzle burned like a furnace. She could actually _feel _its heat.

The tazer struck the Aquatoid just above the mouth. Immediately, ice spread from the point of impact, covering the face in blue, jagged, tendrils.

For a moment, the eyes kept glowing. The launcher kept burning and Ryans thought it would fire regardless. Her bladder let go. She wasn't even remotely aware of it.

Then the red glow faded, and her sigh of relief was so strong she thought it might knock her over.

[10]

It was over now and the Triton Carryalls were deployed. Both to retrieve the USO and the Coelecanth. Garrow reported that it was no longer under alien control.

Over a period of only six hours, the USO was broken apart, its resources taken to Sea Metro.

Rita Mendoza was in the infirmary again, not knowing that she'd have a new arm in two weeks. The arm, which would be stark white with black trim, would be a mix of electronics and aqua plastics.

Life in that part of the Indian Ocean went on. The oil drills chugged and pumped. Seabed life rose out from the sand and started moving around again. Boats floated across. Planes flew over. Submarines—some XCOM and some not—drifted through waters like awkward fingers stumbling through the dark.

And titanic machines still half-dormant in the Earth hummed both softly and sweet.


	23. Pt 3: Ch 3--The First Colony

The First Colony

[1]

March 10

There had been a lot of activity in the Southern Atlantic.

Yesterday, a large USO had been spotted off the coast of Madagascar. It quickly went across the continent of Africa to the South Atlantic.

None of the Anglers were capable of taking on such a vessel. Not even with their new weapons. Rainbow and New Year were sent anyway. If nothing else, they could gather information on it: its size and speed in particular.

But it was gone before the pair were halfway to the waypoint.

"Are you disappointed?" New Year asked on the return trip.

"I dunno." Rainbow said.

"What's up with you anyway? You've been acting weird lately."

Rainbow didn't know what to say to that. The dreams had petered out in February but now they were starting up again

_(death has reared himself a throne)_

and just wear did these new aliens come from

_(in a strange city lying alone)_

and if it was from the sea than how long had they been there?

"Daphne? You alright?"

Rainbow shook her head. "Yes, of course. I'm fine."

And she was basically fine.

For the most part. Mostly.

[2]

March 14

A small USO was 50 miles off the southern tip of Chile. Again Rainbow and New Year were dispatched. Again, the USO managed to escape before they got there.

"Damn it!" New Year could hear the _crack _of Rainbow hitting something on the dashboard that she shouldn't.

_"__Be easy, Rainbow. We're gonna get these bastards. Don't you worry about that."_

He said "don't worry" but Jordan was worried all the time.

They had turned their subs around, and had traveled half a mile before something else showed up on sonar. It was behind them, moving west.

_ "__Heads up Sixx."_

"I see it."

_ "__How much fuel you got?"_

"Enough."

The Triton submarines had a very large fuel capacity. They could remain out to sea for almost three days. The Anglers, not so much. They could last for about twelve hours. But that was where the refuelers came in.

The underwater XCOM project was still vastly supported by most major nations, even if they were reluctant to acknowledge the organization. That support didn't extend to aerial refueling...for the most part.

South Africa was an exception. They had ten American-made refuelers. They were KC-10 Extenders. They weren't always available. In many ways the funding countries had learned jackshit from the First Alien War. None of them were all in. They were still spending plenty of money on their own militaries.

Rainbow could see the logic behind it, but they were still failing. Missiles could certainly damage the smaller USOs, but oftentimes they could either roll out of the way or just outrun them.

Against anything bigger than that, missiles would do nothing.

It hadn't been the case with the Angler team in the eastern ocean, but they'd been using heavy DUPs with a couple Ajaxes thrown in.

Lasers had proven to be quite effective against the alien targets that had attacked Florida. The US and European governments thought that would extend to the USOs as well.

No such luck. It must've been something about the aqua-plastics that they used as hulls. They could take severe thermal changes like it was nothing. A week ago, a small USO above the Egyptian Cartel had waltzed into a battery of laser defenses and had completely destroyed it, without so much as a scratch.

That was not good. Most of the major nations had switched to a combination of laser and missile defenses. The lasers were for larger targets that wouldn't be able to get out of the way. The Asian Coalition had transitioned into all lasers, both in small arms and in heavy ordinance. Now, those craft weapons might as well have been spit balls.

Rainbow and New Year joined up with an Extender in the South Atlantic, so they had 70 percent fuel now.

They turned and went towards their target. Neither one of them said anything.

The size was medium. Just two weeks ago, they might have to just return to base.

Now however, they had new weapons: gauss cannons. The Anglers had them on their right hardpoint and DUP launchers on their left.

The craft guns carried over the same limitations of their small arms variants. Laser cannons had 100 shots, but recharging the battery was a simple as hooking it up to an outlet.

Gauss weapons needed to have their magnetic ammo manufactured at base, and the cannons were no exception. Because the ammo actually took up space on the weapon now, there was less ammo to be had: 50 shots for these new cannons instead of one hundred.

They had similar accuracy to the laser cannons but significantly greater range: just slightly shorter than that of Ajax torpedoes. It meant that the Anglers didn't have to be tossing the USO's salad in order to be in firing range.

That was especially good, because their rate of fire wasn't that great, at 65 percent of the speed of the laser cannons.

Their damage however, was good. At range, the gauss rounds would be only slightly weaker than Ajaxes. Gauss cannon bolts would travel _much _faster. If they could fire in the air—which they couldn't, due to the treaty—even the smallest USOs wouldn't be able to outrun them.

In general, the gauss cannons were comparable to Ajax launchers, but MUCH more flexible.

How shitty would it be if the designers had made a weapon WORSE than the gas technology they were supposed to replace?

They were nearing the Antarctic. The USO was slowing down. It was 100 miles away and moving west. It was 10 miles off the northern coast.

"I think it's going to land." Rainbow said. She did nothing to hide her disappointment. They'd had the gauss cannons for nearly a week and had nothing to shoot them at. It was getting old.

And it did land. Rainbow nearly groaned.

"We'll get this guys, don't you worry about that." New Year said, and then updated Sacred Tear.

_"__We're sending A squad over."_

That meant the Dreyfus siblings, Haru Ichiro, Tanya Olsen, and Rachel Henderson and whoever else. Laura was basically a one-woman army, so they should be fine. The only person who matched her in skill was that Mendoza chick in Sea Metro.

More blips were showing up on sonar. All over the northern coast of the Atlantic.

[3]

Two small ones, two very small ones, and two large ones...and...

...and two _very _large USOs.

"Holy shit!" New Year cried. He was sickened and afraid.

They were spread across the coast in a rough line. The two very large objects were close together.

All of them were touched down. It was a fucking convoy, or something so close to it, you might as well use the word.

"We'll stay on patrol for a while." New Year said. He heard the crack in his voice and hated it.

In any case, they wouldn't. Two small USOs took flight before three minutes had passed. They headed directly for the Anglers. Both pilots zoomed in. The USOs were not just small but very small. They were escorts.

"Weapons free." New Year said.

The USOs quickly got within range of the DUP torpedoes. _Target locked, _the computer said.

Neither one of them opened fire. The escorts would simply roll out of the way. Rainbow's near fatal encounter with the first was still fresh in their minds.

The escorts got within range of the gauss cannons. The pilots opened fire. It can't be said enough that gauss weapons wasn't like lasers. They didn't travel instantly, but they did travel fast: at 7,000 feet per second. In the water.

When they fired, the sound was much like that of a gauss small arm. There was that mechanical sound of something of something locking into place. It was much heavier, much thicker. Neither one of the pilots particularly cared for the sound. It rattled through their bones, and they didn't care for that either.

But the effect? Oh...the effect was nice.

Rainbow's enemy wasn't even able to dodge in time. It was struck dead center. Immediately, it was rocked into a spin.

New Year fired a second later. His escort had time enough to begin a roll. It dodged to the right. Even then, it took a glancing blow.

The escorts opened fire. Their sonic weapons had decent range, but the Anglers were still outside of it. The shots sailed all around them. Rainbow flinched slightly, hating herself for it but unable to stop.

The gauss cannons were slow firing compared to laser cannons, and it was something like an old age, hand-cranked Gatling gun. The next shot fired nearly a second later.

Again, the shot struck home. Rainbow's escort plumed smoke. It didn't move at all before the third shot hit and destroyed it completely.

New Year's escort was having much more luck. The second shot missed. And so did the third. The fourth shot was another glancing blow. It knocked the escort sub into a spin.

Now, he did fire the DUP torpedo. By the time the escort had managed to regain control, the DUP had already struck home. The escort blew up spectacularly.

_"__That was fucking awesome!" _Rainbow cried cheerfully.

"Stay focused." New Year said. Yeah, the new guns were nice, but he didn't feel all that safe. Not with those large USOs in front of them. Sure, they were still touched down. But if the very large submarines went after them, it was all over but the crying.

He got Sacred on the horn. "Sacred. How far out is Taxi?"

_ "__Triton 1 is twelve hours away."_

Fuck those Tritons were too damn slow. But as a bonus, the team would land in the daytime. It was 0110 hours right now.

_"__We don't have enough fuel to wait for them." _Rainbow said.

"No we don't."

Not unless they were able to refuel from an Extender again.

They patched through to the Africa Corp. No, they could not.

[4]

Taxi and Triton 1 were nearly there when the USOs all blasted off.

Taxi had wanted to go back immediately. She hated so far from base with no escort subs of her own. It couldn't be helped though. The Anglers were at base, and wouldn't be done refueling for another five hours.

"Just go to where they had all landed." Diver Commander Laura Dreyfus said.

"But..." Taxi said, and then stopped, glancing over her shoulder. Laura's eyes were calm and dangerous. Beside her was Claude, but his eyes were just as calm. He would advise Taxi to just follow orders.

Taxi did as she was told.

They coasted the Antarctic coastline. For about five hours. It was slow torture for Taxi. The second pass around, they saw it. It was nearly hidden between two mountains in the sea.

A series of buildings. Underwater buildings, and obviously not manmade. Three large T-shapes of aqua plastics and metal protruded out from the seabed.

"Oh my fucking Christ." Taxi said breathlessly.  
"Never seen anything like it." Laura said, but that went without saying. "Get closer."

"We should go back until we figure out—"

"Get closer!"

The Triton was inched closer.

It was dark. They at a considerable depth, and in spite of the fact that it was daytime, things were dark down here. The Triton's headlamps could barely pierce it. It seemed like the dark waters, were actually choking away at the light, keeping it small and narrow.

They could spy phantom shapes moving between the buildings. Some of them were small, only hintings of shapes. They could've just been Taxi's imagination.

Now a large, round, bulbous shape swam into view, out from behind the central building.

Taxi had never been so frightened in her entire life.

Then, an alien torpedo launcher came out from somewhere, shining yellow and leaving a crackling trail.

That was it. That was enough.

Taxi immediately went full throttle, yanking the stick back, and now they were hurtling upward. Laura cried out in fear and anger. The other Divers just cried out in fear. They could hear the projectile following them, and now Taxi was near tears. Any second now, the project would catch them on one of the wings, and their death would be equal parts fire and water.

But no, the projectile's crackling began to fade. They were in the clear.

Now, they could see the bright dazzling underside of the surface. That wasn't good enough for Taxi. The Triton ripped through the surface, and the sun was a jewel staring Taxi right in the face. She cried out in triumph.

She aimed north, and now Laura had recovered and was giving orders that sounded like Pig Latin mixed with Mandarin Chinese. Taxi was having none of it.

They were going home.


	24. First Colony Assault I

The First Colony Assault, pt 1.

March 17

[1]

The Diver woke up in a cold sweat, and she woke up screaming. Immediately, she was restrained by the heavy hands of nurses and medics. They were heavy because she was drugged. Not drugged enough apparently, since the events of yesterday had been vivid in her dream. She'd heard every scream, seen every sonic bolt and spray and blood, and the jolt of shock and horror at what had waited for Squad A was just as fresh as it had been 24 hours ago. A Diver's head exploded in front of her, phantoms with no faces flickered in and out of view, six-limbed demons with invulnerable shells ripped one of her comrades asunder with no visible effort at all.

They—the doctors—applied a needle to her, and she went off to Shadowland again, where dark things with too many eyes crouched in dark corners.

[2]

March 16

"The target is an alien base off far off the coast of the Antarctic." Diver Commander Laura said. "It was discovered 50 hours ago by pilots Sixx and Year."

She was speaking to a squad of fourteen Divers. There would be no Coelecanths on this mission. The debriefing from Sea Metro concerning the medium USO had been nothing short of disturbing.

Drone operator Garrow said that he'd completely lost control of his tank, and that foreign control had been granted. He thought that maybe one of the local drone operators was fucking with him somehow, and he'd started screaming at them.

But none of them had done anything. Of course.

And the drone operators of Sacred Tear were eliminated. Their signals would be too weak to gain control of a drone here in the Indian Ocean and turn it on, let alone overriding the control of an operator here.

So that just left the aliens. George Rankin and his team discussed it at length with each other, with Sacred's technicians and with Captain Joe Vargas.

The word he used was technopathy, as in technology manipulation. He pointed to numerous video games from the early 2000s. Deus Ex, and Call of Duty Black Ops 3, where the player characters could interface with technology: hack it, disable it, control it, you name it.

In those cases, the machines being effected were digital in nature. That made sense. Digital tech—when it came right down to it—was ones and zeroes. Yes and no. It could do anything analog tech could do, and _more_...but it was still all ones and zeroes. All "yes" and "no." All the security countermeasures in the world would never change that.

And all you had to do was add your own binary to the equation.

Rankin and his team believed that the "MC" crap that the late Vera Price had talked about stood for Machine Control or something like that. It was why the USO that had been broken down lacked any conventional interface, like joysticks or helmets with heads-up-displays. It was also why the sonic weapons captured all lacked triggers.

The aliens simply didn't need them.  
"What's to stop them from taking control of _our_ weapons?" Seaman Robert Cohn asked nervously. He suddenly looked at his gauss rifle like it might blow up in his hands.

"Aren't you paying attention?" Laura Dreyfus said sharply. "Our guns aren't digital. They have electronic scopes and firing mechanism, but that's it. Your gun isn't a bomb waiting to go off, greenie, so don't worry about it."

The main question after that was whether MC was based off a cybernetic implants, like with those video games mentioned, or if it was a natural ability, like that kid from the Heroes TV show had.

Fortunately, that question had already been answered about a month ago. Vera Price had been dissected. She was full of cybernetic implants. So were the Aquatoids. When using Machine Control, the implants activated. It accounted for the red markings and the red eyes when the aliens fired their guns. It was damn near a guarantee that all alien units would be equipped with them in one form or another.

[3]

The fourteen divers were all armed with gauss weapons and protected with Aqua Plastic armor. By now, Sacred Tear's gauss weapon line was in full swing. Had they been willing to bring a Coelecanth, it would be armed with a gauss cannon as well.

The Divers loadout went like this:

Diver Commander Laura Dreyfus: gauss rifle with three clips. A thermal tazer.

Lieutenant Tanya Olsen: heavy gauss rifle. Two clips. A gauss pistol and one clip, which was already in it.

Lieutenant Rachel Henderson: gauss rifle with three clips. A thermal tazer.

Ensign Claude Dreyfus: gauss pistol with four clips. A thermal tazer. A magnapack explosive.

Ensign Haru Ichiro: gauss rifle with two clips. The first of four med kits.

Ensign Jahani Al-Fasi: gauss rifle with three clips. Three magna blast grenades.

Ensign Gabrielle Wiles: gauss rifle with three clips. A thermal tazer. Two grenades.

Able Seaman Morgan Liner: gauss pistol with four clips. The second of four med kits.

Able Seaman Theodore Downey: gauss pistol with four clips. A thermal tazer. The third of four med kits.

Able Seaman Robert Cohn: gauss rifle with three clips. Three grenades. A thermal tazer.

Able Seaman Donald Dawson: gauss rifle with two clips. Two grenades. A magnapack explosive.

Able Seaman Kitten Weston: gauss pistol with four clips. The last of four med kits.

Able Seaman Dayako Chikage: gauss rifle with three clips. A magnapack explosive.

Able Seaman Isad El-Amen. Gauss pistol with four clips. A thermal tazer. A magnapack explosive.

*all the Divers are equipped with three flares, which are so light (half a pound) they aren't worth mentioning as a loadout*

The Plastic armor was capable of surviving multiple shots from conventional ballistics as well as laser weaponry. It could survive over 100 shots from the former. Lasers would eventually cook through the armor, but it took at least fifty shots.

It would probably be much less effective against the sonic weaponry. Head Technician Carl Yamata estimated that Plastic armor would be about as effective blocking sonic bolts as the Alloy armor was at blocking plasma bolts.

In other words, the Divers could now probably survive shots from alien pistols and rifles. Probably. The heavy sonic cannon would probably still explode them in one hit; and of course the alien torpedo launchers would too.

_I hope we're ready. _Laura thought. In the First Alien War, alloy armor and lasers were good enough for alien bases, with the main exception being Ethereals. But this was a new war with new rules.

[4]

March 17

The Diver woke up again, but this time not screaming and clawing. She let out a small bird cry upon waking up, and the nearby medic turned to her.

"I'm okay." the Diver said softly. But she was not. She felt bad. Crying bad. She hated to cry. Her dad said that only faggots cried and he didn't raise no faggots.

"Okay." Dr. Grey said. "Do you know where you are?"

"Yes, I remember what happened?"

She saw the somber look on the doctor's face.

"I'm okay I said."

The Diver looked over to her left. One of the Divers was sitting on his bed, his feet on the cold and sterile white floors. He had his face buried in his hands. One of the staff was interviewing him, holding a camera up to his face like he was the Mayor during an unveiling of a memorial.

At one point, the man began to cry.

The waking Diver felt her own tears start. She felt her dad's voice shout in outrage, but it couldn't be helped. She started crying, her face buried in her aching hands, and she _could not _stop.

The doctor let her have five minutes of that. When it was over, the Diver was given a tissue.

She turned back to her own doctor. "What do you want to know?"

[5]

March 16

When they reached the alien colony, it was the evening. It didn't matter. The colony was all the way down on at the bottom of a wide oceanic trench. There would be little, if any, light at this depth. Even the Tritons headlights wouldn't help that much. It would be like trying to shine light through a black hole.

They had nearly reached it. Taxi could see.

_"__We're about to touch down, people."_ she said over the intercom.

"We're not ready." Robert Cohn said.

"Shut your fucking trap Cohn." Tanya said. "Or I'll make sure Lady Brett doesn't call you in the morning."

"Good one sir! Never heard that one before."

"You two shut up." Laura said, and her voice was deadly and even. The two of them shut up.

Laura went on: "We treat this like any other raid. Use cover and slowly move up. You see a hostile, take carefully aimed shots. Remember people, these guns aren't lasers. You got forty rounds at the most. You run out, God help you."

They knew the aliens could wrest control of their digital machines, but not specifically which aliens (were Aquatoids the only ones) or at what distance. The Triton had a computer, so Taxi parked it a quarter of a mile to the north of the alien colony. There was still some light here when the doors opened up.

Laura was first, as always. "Let's move out people. Say a prayer if you want to, but keep up with us while you do."

The bloodbath was only ten minutes away.


	25. First Colony Assault II

Colony Assault II

AN: Again, not going two months without an update. New terror unit at the end. It has a new power, that I'm basing off its name. Ya'll know what it is.

[1]

They spread out in a small line, with Commander Laura in the middle.

They were in an abyssal plain. A wide open one. Aside from a few rises here and there, there was no cover at all. If an alien torpedo came there way, there'd be nowhere to go.

That didn't mean that it would be a sure hit. The alien torpedo launchers were somehow less accurate than the blaster launchers in the First Alien War. In that war, when it came to the aliens and their rockets, there had been no misses. Not at all.

In this war, there had been plenty of misses. The raid on the crashed medium earlier in the month had been proof enough of that.

The blaster launchers had been able to turn, and sharply—perfect for nailing XCOM soldiers behind corners. Which had happened plenty.

That didn't seem to be the case with the torpedo launchers. Laura didn't know if that was the aliens and their stupidity, or the launcher itself, or a combination of the two.

She tried not to think about that. But there was nothing more pleasant to think about. The alien colony probably had some weak aliens. Some Gillmen and Aquatoids. They would die in one shot from a gauss rifle. For the most part.

What else? Her brother Claude was here. That was both good and bad. Good because he was a fine Diver. She'd had doubts about him. His accuracy was average at best, but he was fucking fast. So that was good.

There'd been a small mission about a week ago. A survey ship—the equivalent of a medium scout—had landed. Gillmen had been its crew. One of them had shot at Claude from medium range.

Claude had _dodged _that shit. It had gone for his head, and he just tucked himself in the fetal position and let himself roll forward. The sonic bolt had grazed his plastic aqua armor, breaching it, but just barely.

"It'd aimed too high." He said later. But that shit didn't matter to Laura. Every other Diver probably would've had his or her head popped like a busted soufflé, no question about that.

Claude was probably the best, the fastest, most reflexive scout they had. No question about that either.

And Laura didn't want him here. That was the bad part. They were about to raid an alien base. Or colony. Or whatever. There _would _be big units. Terrorists. They would have abilities and powers that none of them would know about until it was too late.

_Stop it! Stop thinking you've lost before the battle has even STARTED!_

Think positive. Yeah, that was the ticket. They weren't going in with a tank. That was good. No Machine Control for the aliens, if that's what the fucking shit was even called.

But that, too, was both good and bad. She'd rather lose a tank from concentrated alien fire. That's what tanks were for. It was even better even if the tank was critically damaged. The technicians could have it back up and running in a week. Sometimes less than that. A wounded Diver could be out of commission for two, three, sometimes four weeks.

_Positive! Think positive!_

They had tier-2 weapons. Gauss weapons. They could kill Aquatoids and Gillmen with fantastic efficiency. Rail technology. That was the ticket. Nothing should be able to stand up to it. The ammo problem was ten-pound pile of shit in a five-pound bag, but the Divers were getting good with them. Taking aimed shots instead of spraying all over the place and hoping to hit something.

They were nearing the trench, heading into the dark below.

[2]

They had Tanya hang back, crouched behind the lip of a rise in the plain. The Divers moved out in front of her, splitting apart so that she had an unobstructed view.

_"__You got anything?" _Laura asked.

"Nothing."

Her nerves were frayed. Her muscles were as tight as piano wire. Panic seized her for a moment, and she turned around suddenly. She'd been damned certain something was behind her. It was dark. Not as dark as it would be in the trench, but very dim. Laura allowed the team to deploy a flare every hundred feet or so. They had to save the majority of them for the trench.

Taxi and the Triton was behind her, of course, but the headlights weren't on.

Tanya watched as the defined figures of the Divers shrank and shrank into toy silhouettes. She grew more nervous. She kept looking over her shoulder. Only now she was doing it with her pistol drawn.

_"__Anything Tanya?...Tanya?!"_

She nearly jumped from the shout. "No. Nothing."

It occurred to her that maybe she needed to look through the scope before saying that.

She did. There _was _nothing as far as she could tell. "Can I regroup with you guys please."

_"__Yeah. Do it."_

Tanya made sure the radio was off so they wouldn't hear her shout of joy and relief.

[3]

At the lip of the top of the trench now.

It was massive—an immense mouth cut into the earth. It looked to be about three hundred feet in diameter. They actually couldn't tell from here. It was so large, and the light was so meager, that they couldn't see all the way to the opposite side.

But they could see down. Rachel let out a chemical flare and it floated down and down and down...

The decline was steep and smooth. They wouldn't be able to hide anywhere on the way down, or use anything for support on the way up.

The objects down there were only hintings of objects. The Divers could see them because they were _that _large.

And some of them had their lights on. And somebody was definitely home.

"Should we have Taxi come a bit closer?" Rachel asked.

Laura stared down. She honestly wasn't sure. The alien colony had a sonar system—or an equivalent—in place more likely then not. They had probably pinged their flying sub already.

"We'll have her pull up halfway." Laura finally said, and got on her radio to give the order. Taxi obliged, her tone was dull but Laura knew she was afraid. _Dumb bitch better not try blasting off without us._

But Laura shut that thought out.

She waited until Taxi was about one hundred feet behind them.

"We go down." Laura said. "Not much cover. Tanya you set up here. Claude, you—"

"I know." He said, and readied his gun.

"You stay here." Laura finished, her eyes narrow. "And don't fucking interrupt me again."

Claude looked at her, eyes raised.

"He's not going first?" Downey asked. He looked scared, as though he might be volunteered in Claude's place.

"We need someone to cover. Dayako's going first."

"Oh fucking _bullshit_!" Chikage almost screamed.

"Shut up cockhole!" Laura yelled. "You ever question my orders again and I'll blow your head off before the aliens get a chance. You're a lower rank. Get fucking moving asshole."

Chikage looked like she was about to cry. For a moment, Laura didn't think she would do it. A God damned mutiny before the actual mission was even underway. _That _would be an interesting debrief.

Dayako sniffed and starting going down into the basin.

Below them, the alien structures stood out like T's. There were three main structures that they could see, with the one in the center being the largest.

Wiles went after her, and Kitten Weston went after her.

They hadn't even made it halfway down when they made contact.

[4]

It was an alien torpedo.

_"__Take cover!" _Laura screamed over the radio. Only there was no cover _to _take.

When Dayako saw it come racing from between the left and center buildings, a golden orb of pulsing death, she was sure that was it. _Here lies Dayako Chikage. Or least, where she _would _lie if there was anything left to bury._

But something happened. She had no idea what. The thing was heading for her, for her team, sure. However, it wasn't heading directly at them. The alien firing the damn thing either wasn't aiming properly or didn't account for the recoil.

The shot was high. _Much _too high. A shot rang out. That was Tanya, firing a shot at the.

For a moment, Dayako thought the alien torpedo would miss the wall of the basin entirely, flying out through the hole at the top.

But it did hit the wall of the basin. High and to the left. Instead of obliterating anyone in the squad, they were covered in a wall of smoke and sand.

It was not thick however, and the wide open space gave it many directions to move in.

_"__Everyone okay?!" _Laura shouted.

A bunch of yes ma'am's, yessirs, rogers and affirmatives.

_"__I see the fucker! Aquatoid!" _Tanya said and fired her heavy gauss a second time. Dayako could see the shooter as well: a small glint of red light in the distance.

The gauss bolt sailed off to meet it. The alien had probably no idea that something could tag him from so far away, but tagged he was. The red glint blinked out of existence.

Dayako did spy some cover. That was good. But it was at the floor of the basin. That was bad. And the "cover" was a piece of the building. That was worse.

Specifically from the center building. A long and narrow tongue of metal jutted away from it, ending in a short L. Dayako called it out to the rest of them.

Laura rogered that and gave them the order to move out. They let go of flares, which floated forward lazily toward the colony.

The squad quickly realized two things.

In the center, there were not three separate main buildings. All the buildings were linked, connected by metal rows that Laura assumed were hallways on the inside. The one on the left was not really a full building at all, but an extension of the central building. It had a second floor that was like a T-shaped balcony. A single window blazed with yellow light.

The central building had a wide base, narrow neck, and wide second floor. The many windows (Dayako counted ten on this side alone) were also lit yellow, and Dayako fancied she could see shapes darting across it.

On the left side of the central building's metal "tongue" was a door. It opened and another Aquatoid came out. It was wielding something small and one-handed.

_"__Contact!" _Morgan Liner said. He fired three times and missed three times. The Aquatoid's eyes shined red, and it raised its weapon. It wasn't rushing with its aim, even though it was facing down fourteen heavily armed Divers.

Jahani fired once. The bolt exploded the ground in front of the Aquatoid, spewing sediment into its face. That fucked up its seemingly deliberate aim, and it fired the next split second.

The round was blue in color. The yellow light from the window put green pinpricks in it.

The alien had been aiming for Dayako, Jahani and Morgan. They were grouped far too close together. Instead of hitting them, it touched the basin wall slightly to the left of Donald Dawson. There was a thick, almost _juicy _explosion. Dayako turned and saw Donald was completely frozen.

_What the fuck is THIS?_

Jahani fired again. This time the shot tore off the leg of the Aquatoid. It screamed, tumbling away from them.

Dayako turned and fired. It hit center mass. The alien stopped screaming.

[5]

Forward and forward. They were fifty feet away from the buildings.

The right building was only slightly larger than the left "building." It had a single window on the second floor. Strangely enough, it also had a gap in the building. It was on the second floor, a translucent fence-thing covered the bottom half. It was a true balcony.

There was something looking through it. Something Gabrielle Wiles absolutely did not recognize. It had golden-yellow skin. Its eyes were shining red.

_"__What the fuck is that?" _she screamed.

_"__Everyone make for the buildings!" _Laura said again. Though the jury was out as to whether everybody—or even _any_body—was listening.

Tanya fired at the yellow monster. It made no attempts to dodge. Tanya's aim wasn't great but improving. The gauss bolt hit center mass.

She cried out in triumph, but it was cut off before even a second had passed.

The yellow creature was still standing. The shot had made the thing lurch back, as if punched, but it recovered almost immediately.

It raised its weapon. Fired. A torpedo cut through the waters.

It went for Gabrielle Wiles, whom responded with feeble discharges of her gauss rifle. One of the bolts hit. This time, the yellow creature didn't even flinch.

Too little, and much too late.

The crackling torpedo sailed passed Gabby's shoulder and detonated on the basin wall just behind her. The plastic armor gave her some protection, so instead of Gabby being completely disintegrated, she was ripped into four pieces. Her charred remains were sent hurtling toward the alien colony.

"Fucker!" Tanya roared and fired again. This time the bolt screeched off the balcony's fence. Amazingly, the creature ducked into the building.

"You guys see that thing?!" Tanya said.

_"__We saw it!" _Kitten yelled. _"Haru was lining up a shot!"_

_"__What the fuck is it?!" _Theodore Downey asked.

Laura said. _"I dunno, but we gotta get into the building! We are sitting ducks out here."_

[6]

They were making good progress, all things considered. Two more Aquatoid's appeared from the central and right entrances, but both were gunned down before they could get a shot off.

They were going to make it. Once inside they would have more of an advantage. The aliens would probably fire the torpedoes at close range; no way would the aliens fire off them off at point-blank range.

Then Tanya caught something unusual in the scope of her. Something that was like a immense bubble of clear meat, in which glowing and translucent organs rested.

Then the phantoms appeared.


	26. First Colony Assault III

**AN: I have XCOM 2 with all the DLC. =D**

**I know I said, I'd abbreviate the campaign, and obviously not only have I not been doing that, but I've been splitting the big battles into multiple parts. It's kind of silly, but I think chapters are better when they aren't as long as The Stand, and the same goes for the paragraphs. I don't like it when big authors make their chapters and paragraphs as short as possible, guys like James Patterson, but for these online stories, I think that kind of format is best. **

Colony Assault III

[1]

"What is it?" Claude asked. He obviously couldn't sight in with his pistol. He couldn't understand why Laura was making his stay up here. It couldn't have been about the dangers, could it? He'd been

"I'm not sure." Tanya said, looking down the scope.  
She zoomed out. The thing was a massive and oversized jellyfish...but that didn't make much sense. Its bubble torso was the size of a twelve-passenger van. It swelled and shrank, as though breathing. _That _was like a jellyfish.

Inside of it was a quivering mass of red meat that looked _somewhat_ like a heart. Its tentacles were not at all like that a jellyfish. Instead of being long and narrow, they were short and stubby.

Just looking at it made her feel funny.

"What the actual shit." Tanya whispered. "Guys I've got a visual on a new X-Ray."

"I see it." Kitten cried out.

It came out from the right most building. Specifically, the left side of the right building. It floated above the hallway that connected the building to the central tower.

Kitten and Haru and Downey, who were on the right flank, saw it immediately.

In the firing line's center were Robert Cohn, Dayako, and Laura. Morgan Liner was behind them, trying desperately to unfreeze Donald Dawson. He was hoping the med kit would help him with that, but he couldn't get the needle through the ice.

Now Liner was attempting to push Dawson up the hill, to limited effect.

Rachel Henderson and Jahani were taking the left flank, and were the farthest ahead, and the lowest to the ground. They had been debating going into the left tunnel, which connected to the central tower, or moving past it and securing the rest of the outside.

Laura had settled the argument for them, they would entire the building at the same time with the rest of the squad.

Rachel and Jahani didn't see anything.

But nine Divers saw the new enemy and nine gauss weapons pointed toward it.

Tanya, of course, had the best shot, and fired first.

She missed.

"Seriously, Olsen?" Claude smacked the side of his helmet.

"Shut up Claude."

"It's the size of twenty people stuck together!"

"SHUT UP!"

Laura's low, angry, voice came on comms. _"Both of you shut up."_

That shut them both up.

_"__Focus fire on that fucker."_

The gauss weapons, when fired together, sounded like one entity—like a great mechanical gear being slammed into place. The water was filled with a deadly hail of gauss bolts.

Two or three missed. Most of them actually struck home. Not glancing hits either, but directly where the red mass hung in the bubble.

The creature's bubble skin billowed and puffed. Other than that, it did not flinch.

The Divers paused. Even Laura paused. They were uncertain, afraid.

_"__Again!"_

Another volley. This time, the jellyfish monster actually recoiled back a little bit.

Laura smiled. It wouldn't last long.

[2]

Another jellyfish appeared. This one came out from the left side of the main tower.

Jahani reported it in.

_"__These things have to be some kind of terror unit."_ Laura said. _"Please for the love of God, don't let them get close."_

But they weren't trying to. They were sitting there, their bodies furling and unfurling like flags in the wind. It was beginning to make Laura feel...weird.

Tanya fired her heavy gauss at the jellyfish on the right. Once, then twice. It noticeably slowed its treading movements. She grinned. Finally some damage!

Then something strange happened, and she stopped grinning. Behind the two van-sized jellyfish, there was a fog coming in.

A fog. Coming in. Under the fucking _water_.

A fog, and not dust. A cloud of dust would have been thicker. Almost opaque.

It was fucking fog. That made zero sense.

"What the hell is this shit?" Tanya said.

_"__What the hell is what?"_ Haru asked.

"Another enemy?" Kitten asked.

The fog swept through the battlefield, swallowing up the jellyfish. It swept through the ranks of the Divers. The line of gauss weapons moved left and right...and then lowered.

"What the hell is going on?" Tanya asked.

"Guys? Guys!" Haru said. "The fuck is the matter?!"

None of them heard him.

[3]

For most of them, it was like the fog from Silent Hill had rolled in. They could see nothing, not even fellow Divers who were, next to them.

The water was still and silent. Most of them had headache, though none of them knew why. They were heading towards a great and terrible truth about the new invaders—something all of them had hoped would be false.

For Laura, the headache was splitting. She knew it wasn't from the change in elevation, because they'd taken drugs to deal with that sort of thing. There was something speaking on the comms. Some garbled black speech she couldn't understand.

She went around in a circle, looking for approaching targets, and couldn't see anything.

No scratch that. She could see things: shapes moving just out of her vision.

She aimed her weapon.

_No, _she thought, _they could be fellow Divers._

That made sense. The Divers had been next to her, not the aliens.

But then one of the shapes was in front of her. It was a monstrous shadow-shape, with glowing red eyes.

She was horrified. She was sick with fear. And as it came close to her, a bolt of fear was sent through her.

She emptied her gun at it. It bucked and jigged, and eventually somersaulted away from her. She smiled in sick triumph.

Another one appeared: this one to her right. This one appeared to be trying to surrender, its hands high above its head. But its eyes were also glowing, and the fucker wasn't about to fool Laura Dreyfus. She reloaded, and shot the bastard between the eyes.

She sensed more targets behind her. She turned, and they were faint phantom movements in the distance. She fired at all of them.

Then she sense movement behind her _again!_

She turned; this time she was too late. A slender lance touched her helmet just above the collar.

[4]

Haru had been aiming at the first jellyfish monster when he'd heard screaming to his left.

Kitten Weston did something stupid. She tried to go over to Laura and fucking talk to her. Her hands had been raised over her head, a sign of peace.

It hadn't mattered. Laura had shot her and now Kitten's body was somersaulting through the dark waters, her limbs outstretched.

Above him, and behind, Claude Dreyfus was rolling on the top of the incline, his hands at the temples of his helmet. He was screaming.

Robert Cohn was shooting at nothing in particular. His shots glanced off the main tower.

Jahani was trying to shoot Cohn, and Rachel was trying to shoot Jahani. Dayako was beside Cohn and not trying to shoot anyone. She sat on the seabed, her legs straight out, and she appeared to be looking up at the sky.

Haru couldn't believe it. He didn't want to believe it.

Dr. Rankin had talked some big bullshit about how the new aliens only had Mechanical Control, or whatever it was called. They had this technopathy to communicate with instead of psionics. And in fact Rankin had been sure they had _no _psionics.

Why would they, Rankin had asked, when they could communicate through machines instead?

Well here you go, Dr. Rankin. Here was the result of all those psionics the aliens didn't have.

And it had something to do with those jellyfish. The second one was starting to approach, but its movements were fairly slow. It didn't help that it had such a large torso, and such stubby little tentacle-legs.

Haru looked around, saw a magnapack on the ground beside the frozen block that held Donald Dawson. He swam over to it and snatched it up. The trigger was not a switch or a series of buttons, but a dial. Ancient bullshit, but what can you do.

Haru set it for ten seconds, thought about it for a split second, and reduced it to seven.

He hefted the thing up. It was quite heavy and he wasn't strong. He had to let go of his gun and let it drift.

He turned, thinking the terror unit (such a fitting description in this case) would already be in barrel-stuffing range. _Hey man, all that slow-swimming shit? Yeah, I was just fucking with you. _

But the Hallucinoid (was that a good name?) hadn't even crossed half the distance.

Haru quickly spun around. He'd need momentum for what he was about to do. At the end of the spin, he hurled the magnapack.

It still wasn't a very good toss, but it went decently far. The magnapack was never meant to be tossed like a grenade. Haru spinning also ran down the timer.

The Hallucinoid passed the bomb. It didn't blow up. The alien terrorist was probably twenty feet away from Haru and closing.

The Hallucinoid kept coming, gaining another five feet. Just when Haru thought it would swim out of range, the magna-pack exploded. It exploded with the force of four regular grenades.

The Hallucinoid was swallowed up in the explosion. It seemed to catch fire (briefly) and get torn apart at the same time.

[6]

Black shapes. Monstrous and terrible moved down below her. They screamed and they laughed.

_Shoot the demons, _said a cold and terrible voice. It had an echo, with a deeper voice. She thought fleetingly of Sigma from Red vs. Blue.

_No! _Tanya thought to herself. She was sweating.

She could feel the muscles of her body wanting to shoot at the black shapes. They were ugly, monstrous things. They _deserved _to be shot.

There was one beside her too. It was threatening to kill her.

_No. It's a trick. They're Divers! The alien terror unit is casting an illusion. It's a psion._

_No, it's not, _said the cold voice. _These shadow demons are as real as raindrops. They'll kill you if you let them._

Tanya felt her gun tug towards the targets immediately below her. One was staring up to look at her.

_No! _she thought, and moved it back to where she _thought _the first Hallucinoid was. No. It was a little more to the right. The heavy gauss had been at about a forty five degree angle. The monster had been just to the left of the right building.

_No! _said the cold and terrible voice.

_Yes, _she shouted back in response. And was it her imagination, or was the fog around her actually receding? She thought it was.

She could see the faint but large movements of the Hallucinoid now. She fired her remaining two shots. The second followed the first like a lovesick child. They struck home, hitting center mass.

This time there was an effect. Oh, boy, was there an effect. Hallucinoid seemed to split in half, from the top of its bubble to the middle. Like a bladed pendulum had swung right through it.

There was a thick popping sound that had plenty of strength to it even from this distance.

The Hallucinoid deflated and slowly drifted to the ground.

The fog began to go away.

[7]

Haru and Tanya told them what had happened. They'd been freaking out and he'd seen none of the things they had. No shadow creatures—which of course had been fellow Divers—and no fog.

Tanya had seen it but had been able to resist it. Somewhat. She doubted if it was a good idea to keep hold of the heavy gauss. But Haru wasn't near strong enough to use it.

"It was a mistake to come here." Robert Cohn said. His eyes were wide and trembling. He looked like he would panic again.

"Enough of that." Rachel Henderson said.

"It's true." Cohn said.

"We're sitting ducks out here." Claude said. He looked at Laura. "Boss?"

Laura said nothing. She looked at nothing. She was trembling in her suit. Claude wanted to touch her, but was afraid to.

His fears were confirmed when Morgan Liner tried to tap her shoulder. He succeeded, and then got decked right in the face.

"What the fucking hell?!" he cried out.  
Claude thought that would snap his sister out of it. But Laura would neither snap nor out. That was bad. Their commander shutting down was the last thing they needed.

Then again, how sane would he have been if their positions were reversed? He'd probably be even worse.

"We need to go in." Rachel said finally.

Everyone looked at her like she was mental.

She looked angry at them for being angry at her. "Don't give me that bullshit. The day's not over yet. Not even close. We still have a job to do."

"You were freakin' out just as bad as any of us were." Cohn said, and got punched right in the helmet for his troubles.

Rachel turned to look at the rest of them. "That was two terror units. Odds are, the aliens got two or three more like that. Tanya said she was able to resist it. Haru seems to be immune. These two will be our pointmen as we enter the building."

The two of them looked horrified. But there was nothing to argue or discuss. With Laura checked out, Rachel was in command now. And until they heard otherwise from Captain Vargas over in Sacred Tear, the mission was to be completed.

"God help us all." Morgan said.

All of them turned to the nearest appendage sticking out of the building, ending in a door that was fifteen feet in front of them.

The worst had yet to happen.


	27. Colony Assault IV

**AN: You guys know what sucks? Ship missions. You know why? Because they take forever. Just like this colony assault. I think it's time to be done with it.**

**I couldn't remember exactly what the inside of the colonies looked like—at least in relation from floor to floor. Of course, I remember the synonium device is on the third floor.  
So as I was writing this part, I was rewatching clips of people on Youtube. Specifically, a guy named Meridian.  
Meridian devised a tactic I call "Meridian's Rush." I'm not going to describe it in detail, I'm going to show you what it is in the story at a later date.**

Colony Assault part 4

[1]

Claude Dreyfus was chosen to breach. The gauss pistol had a faster rate of fire than the rifle variant and weighed much less. His reactions and mobility was the best of any Diver in Sacred Tear. He'd probably be able to get a shot off before an alien with a launcher would.

He placed the magnapack charge at the door, set it for thirty seconds. "Stand clear!"

They all backed away, moving toward the slope. Rachel and Tanya scanned the horizon with alert and frightened eyes.

The explosion was large, but made small by all the alien torpedoes that had gone off. Claude thought the alien torpedo's blast was twice as large, and as damaging. The roar of the magnapack's explosion was also somewhat muted, sounding like a giant stepping lightly on the ground rather than stomping.

The rust-colored door buckled in, and for a moment Claude thought the charge hadn't worked. The charges always worked. The door appeared to be of aqua plastic construction, same as the USOs.

Claude started to worry. _Damn! Of course these doors aren't going to be the same as the ones on the USOs. They are probably aqua plastics, yeah, but the door is probably reinforced—twice as thick as the ones on their subs._

That was bad. No...scratch "bad"—that was fucking awful. That would put them up shit creek, sans paddle. They only had one other magnapack, and that belonged to Dayako.

Claude smacked his head. He forgot about the balcony on the right side. The one with the open gap that served as a sniper's nest of sorts. They didn't have to do any of this shit at all...if the right building connected—

The door fell all the way in, dropping quite fast even in the water. It hit the floor on the inside with a loud CLANG that made them all jump.

Claude swam for it, his gauss pistol in one hand, his thermal tazer in the other.

On the inside, there was a single alien: an Aquatoid. It was armed not with a torpedo launcher (thank God for that) but one of the smaller guns—one that was used to freeze Dawson with.

Claude raised and fired within a half-second, the pistol letting off two quick rounds. The Aquatoid—its gun already pointing at the door—was able to get a shot off as well. Claude's shots both struck home. The first bolt shattered the creature's left shoulder; the second disemboweled it.

The launcher was sent spinning; it struck the wall on the left side.

The projectile it fired was blue. It went hard to one side and struck the wall immediately to Claude's left. It didn't scorch it but instead a large patch of ice instantly formed. Claude thought fleetingly of the ice beam from Metroid Prime.

The Aquatoid screamed out. It was protracted and loud, seeming to echo again and again through the long hallway.

Claude fired again, hitting the thing in the neck, putting it out of its misery.

He gave the all clear, and then moved on the door at the very end while his fellow Divers piled into the hallway. He tried not to think of what would happen if the door opened, revealing a creature armed with an alien torpedo launcher.

[2]

Everyone was in the hallway now. Laura was in the far corner, and it took a great deal of willpower to avoid going to her and asking how she was. Rachel wouldn't like that. Tanya would hate that.

The inside was more decorative than the interiors of USOs, only decorative was obviously not the right word. The walls were fleshy pink in color, with their bottom edges the same rust-color as the floors. The hallway was somewhat dim but not dark. On the walls were dots of gold light. Tiny dots, but with fairly

"Now what?" Cohn asked.

"Shut up Cohn, that's the first thing." Rachel said. "Second: we are going to clear out the middle. It's a square from the looks of things on the outside, so watch the corners."

Claude was on point, with Morgan beside him. They opened the doors, revealing the wall of an enclosed space. They were greeted by a Hallucinoid, fluttering just above the door.

It descended immediately, and reached for them with a stubby tentacle. It glowed with eerie blue light. To Claude, the surrounding temperature dropped dramatically.

_It's gonna freeze us!_

Morgan and Claude opened fire, emptying their pistols. The water in front of them bloomed with red-yellow light.

The Hallucinoid was forced back, its glowing stubby tentacle lashing back and forth. Holes popped open all across its bubble canopy, it's "brain interior" bursting like a thrown watermelon.

The terrorist collapsed into the wall behind it, already deflating. The wall was splattered with its gore. It made Claude want to puke.

But he held it in somehow.

"Keep going!" Rachel said. Claude wanted to stuff a sock into her mouth.

He and Morgan went forward, Claude's gun swiveling to the left corner, Morgan's to the right. Nothing.

They swam to the interior wall, peeking around. They reported a door on both ends. The interior wall formed a rough but large rectangle in the center of the room.

Haru came in, then Rachel. Then Jahani. As they did, Claude and Morgan slowly wrapped around the interior wall. There was a narrow door on the left, a wide door on the right, and of course the rectangle in the center was actually a room. It had its own door, even larger than the others. It was probably the way to the inside.

Claude and Morgan shouted "clear" at the same time. Jahani covered the left door, Haru the right. Tanya covered the one to the room they just came from. Laura was beside her, not saying anything.

[3]

"What the fuck are we even looking for?" Tanya asked.

"The colony control center." Rachel answered. "Superbus did a scan of this place. The power readings are the same as the alien bases during the first war."

Laura was quiet. Claude wanted her to say something. Anything.

Rachel went on. "Back then the readings all came from a central room. The place was like a nucleus to the atom. Only the atom was a greenhouse, keeping the climate regulated to best serve the aliens.

"The computers ran everything in the bases: the alien radars, comms., the power generator, the fucked-up gardens they had. If you broke the computers there, the rest of the base simply died without it."

"So we are looking for the computer room."

"Yes and no. From the readings, the target is a lot more...specific. It's a single object, instead of an entire room."

"That's confusing..." Dayako said.

"If you find something that looks important. REALLY important, then break it. It's probably going to be all by itself."

Tanya looked like she was going to argue. Rachel cut her off.

"Enough chatter. Let's get to it. Keep in mind, we're just at the outside, we have to get to it."

Claude and Morgan—of course—were chosen to breach the central door. Dayako's magnapack was place and set.

It exploded and before the cloud had a chance to disappear, they rushed in, gauss guns drawn.

They expected to find the worst of the aliens they had encountered so far, only in a cramped area—a practical killhouse.

There was nothing in the elevator shaft.

And it was an elevator shaft. On the floor were blue-green tiles that glowed with faint light. Above them was a balcony that wrapped all the way around the top. Any aliens on top would've had a distinct advantage, especially the ones directly above them, whom the Divers wouldn't see until entering the middle.

The elevator was enormous in size, more than enough to fit a few tanks or terror units.

"Nobody's here?" Morgan asked.

"There's a blind spot above us." Claude noted.

They swam up with their guns drawn. Still nothing.

"Did we get them all?" Morgan asked.

Claude tried to think. How many had they killed so far? At least ten. In the first war, alien bases could have anywhere from twenty to thirty. Then again, base raids had only taken place underground, with no outside fortress to storm.

"I really don't think so." Was all Claude said.

He was so right.

[4]

They all piled into the elevator shaft. When they stepped into the light, they expected to feel that strange weightlessness from the elevators on the UFOs of the First War.

Instead, they all felt like they'd put on a good five million pounds. The glowing floor tiles opened up, each revealing an individual hole.

"What the hell is happening?!" Rachel cried out.

Claude opened his mouth to respond.

Then they were all sucked into the abyss.

[5]

For a moment, all was black. Not merely a dimness, but inky blackness through which nothing could be seen.

Then a bit of light pierced it. A subtle blue square. No, it wasn't subtle at all. In the inky blackness, the blue light was like a screaming wound.

She blinked and blinked and blinked. Eventually, things brightened and shapes started to appear. Fleshy-pink in color...mostly. Near the bottom were orbs of purple.

She was staring at a wall. The blue-light was not a light at all, but a translucent window through which light shined.

She had no bearings. No idea where any of her comrades were.

She turned, and she was staring dead-straight at an Aquatoid. It looked just as confused as she was. Its weapon was not drawn, and in fact it didn't even have a ranged one. In one hand was one of those square-tablet communication devices. In the other hand was a drill.

She immediately raised her gauss rifle, one-handed, and blew its head off. The headless body crumpled and tumbled in the water, bumping lightly against the wall behind it. Orange blood sprayed across the wall in a misshapen fan.

Then she got her wits about her. Some of them.

She was the Diver Commander. She was Laura. She had to get her fucking head together. Her team was counting on her, and she'd spent a good ten minutes in La La Land. Why? Because some of her troops died? That was fucking XCOM baby.

A slow grin spread across Laura's face.

"Guys. This is Laura."

Claude's voice immediately: _"My God are you finally fucking _with us_?!" _

"Yes, Claude. I am. Where are you?"

_"__I dunno. It dropped me next to a wide open area, with a huge gap in the floor. It has a fence around it. Behind me is the exit, a big bunch of glowing blue tiles."_

Rachel chimed in. _"Don't know my location either. That elevator—if that's even what it was—scattered us all over. We gotta regroup."_

Laura considered it, putting her back to the wall. On all of the Divers wrists were holo-devices. They showed the rough layout of the area, and the locations of the other Divers.

Regrouping would take time, and give the aliens the chance to do much the same. At the same time, this place was obviously a maze, and the readings from Superbus' Triton stated that it was a large maze at that. It might be better to for everyone to find their own way to the control room.  
Whoever got their first and destroyed the control device could report it to the others, and then they could all retreat to Claude's area.

She shook her head. No. This place was a maze. Even the small area she was in had like four ways in and out, not to mention this small little cubbyhole room she had her back to.

Speaking of which...

She went around it, found a door. Laura opened it...

There was nothing inside. Laura sighed in relief.

[6]

Haru and Morgan ended up in roughly the same area, in a relatively claustrophobic room with glowing, massive, purple orbs lined up in a row. There were three structures of that, tight together.

A Gillmen came around the corner one of the rows made, swimming quickly as if it had somewhere to go. It was just as surprised as Laura's most recent victim, its expression was comical.

Morgan fired off a burst before as Haru was raising his weapon. The first shot struck the shoulder. The Gillmen's sonic rifle discharged but was not dropped. The second and third shot struck the purple orb. It glowed intensely for a moment, and Haru had time to think _It's gonna blow!_

But it did not, and the Gillmen had time to ready his gun and fire at Haru. There were probably no more than five feet between him and the alien. It missed.

Haru raised his gun to his hip and fired. It tagged the bastard right in the groin. Its mouth opened in a silent, bubbly scream. Morgan's next shot made it tumble like a ragdoll into the purple structure.

With that done, they scanned their surroundings. Three of the four exits went into corridors unknown, and Haru didn't _want _to know them. One of them had pedestals, on which blue orb containers sat. Unknown objects were inside of them.

The last exit lead to an open space. An open space with a large fenced-in gap in the middle of it.

They saw Claude across the room. Haru's smile was so big and vast he thought it would split his head in two.

"Who's that blonde asshole waving at us?!" Morgan called out.

_"__Who's that black bitch not waving back?!" _Claude answered back.

General laughter from the three. That helped. Quite a lot.

They caught movement to the right, heard a dull sound of heavy meat thudding against the floor. They turned. And what they saw dried up their laughter.

[7]

Tanya Olsen was by herself, and she didn't like that shit. Not at all. In the horror movies, the teen running off by themselves

_Stop it! You are a Diver! Not some stupid little kid with his dick hanging out!_

Her surroundings were nothing like what her comrades were reporting in, and she didn't like that either.

Their areas had an overall light palette overall—relatively light pinks and golds. The spot she'd ended up in was a shade or two darker, with a slightly bronze look to it.

Her path branched out, just like that of the others.

There was a ramp, which meant she was on a lower level. Which meant this colony had multiple levels to it. The thought of that filled her with dread.

She turned could slightly see into the next room to the southwest. In it were odd and compelling objects—large translucent fleshy-looking cups that held green crystals. Not the crystals that had been found in the ion-engines of USOs. Maybe it was their raw, unrefined ore.

Another path lead to an area, in which flesh-colored pistons moved up and down like some grotesque parody of intercourse. There was a dull humming sound coming from them. She noticed them in the green crystal room as well.

The place wasn't like the alien bases from the first war. This place felt strangely alive. Even the ramp seemed to shift between flatness, and forming actual stairs for actual feet.

And Tanya was very much afraid.

She turned completely around. She'd put her heavy gauss cannon onto her back and got out her gauss pistol. Less damage, but the heavy gauss wouldn't do well in close—

There was an alien in front of her. A new one.

It resembled a giant brain. It had bony spines on the top of it. It had a bony protrusion on its front that looked like a mouth.

It didn't lung for her, it came slowly. Tentacles spread out from its bottom, reaching for her.

Tanya screamed.

[8]

Cohn and Jahani ended up in the same spot, next to a room with blue containers on pedestals. They were unbelievably thankful for that. They high-fived one another.

Then they heard the high-pitched sound of sonic fire. They froze on the spot.

"What the shit was that?!" Cohn cried out.

"What do you think?" Jahani said.

"Fuck you."

They followed the sound.

[9]

Dayako was by herself. She was on the same level as Tanya, though of course she had no way of knowing that for certain.

She was near a room that had what looked like alien cryogenic chambers. In Futurama—and sci-fi shows in general—they were long, slender cylinders with metal frames and clear windows that you could look into, to see the person on the other side.

The two she could see—she was viewing the room from a bad angle—were like living pods. They were a light-pink and parted open, their insides yellow and green. Faint wisps of slime spread out in the deep water. They were on raised things that looked like arms rather than pedestals.

They were pulsating, like living hearts. It made her sick to look at them.

And they were cold. Quite cold. She could feel it all the way from over here.

She heard a THUMP—_felt _a THUMP. It felt like a giant was walking nearby.

It was coming from the room she was looking at.

_Don't get any closer!_

But she was already swimming forward. Cautiously, with her gun drawn of course, but forward just the same.

The chamber was quite big, much larger than she originally thought, now that she was seeing it from a proper angle. In the corner, was a large one attached to the wall. It was also open.

It only caught her eye for a moment. What drew her gaze was the thing on the opposite exit of the room.

It looked like a dinosaur's tail with bronze-colored scales.

_No, that can't be._

But it was. It wagged slowly in the water. And the thing it was attached to was turning around. There was a dull, but enormous thud of...something hitting the wall it was at.

"No." Dayako said softly. "No you aren't real. You can't be."

The tail disappeared from sight. A long and awful ten seconds passed.

A head appeared in the doorway. A dinosaur's head. Its eyes were narrow with a stupid, evil petulance. Its corona was reddish-yellow, its pupils like chips of coal. It was grinning a chrysalid's grin, with blade-like teeth.

Dayako laughed frantically.

It saw her. Its grin widened. It walked forward, and turned into the room. It had no arms—not even the tiny ones the T-Rex's were known to have. It had on a blue armored jacket. On either side of it were two massive sonic cannons, about twice as large as the ones the aliens were sometimes seen carrying.

"Not real." Dayako said softly. "You're not real."

She was still saying it when the muzzles of the twin-cannons started to glow, and red markings etched a jagged path across the creature.

[10]

The first thing Claude thought was that they were being punked. Someone in Sacred Tear had a fucked-up sense of humor and that the whole thing was actually a joke. All so that they could get people down here in this strange new base underwater, and see what looked like a man in a kaiju costume about to perform in the next Godzilla movie.

But if it was a costume, then how could any normal-sized man or women fit in something so...large?

It was a gargantuan lobster—a healthy reddish-orange in color—that walked upright. Its legs, though thick, seemed comically narrow compared to the rest of it. A large lobster's tail hung between the legs like a drugged-up cock. Its mouth-region was a mess of fangs and probes that had always made lobsters look so _ugly _compared to other animals.

Sitting on its face were large green sphere that were meant to be eyes. They had no pupils at all, but seemed to shimmer with sick light.

It had four-arms, like that alien from Ben 10. The upper pair were massive, ending in equally massive pincers. _Watch out Pikachu, _Claude thought madly, _it's going to use "Guillotine." Good thing it can only do it five times!_

The lower pair were much smaller, with correspondingly smaller pincers. Small enough to have a sonic cannon held in them. The lobster man held it differently than the Gillmen and Aquatoids had.

Those aliens held the cannons at shoulder height, like you would with any normal gun. The sonic weapons didn't have much in the way of recoil. The cannons only had slightly more than the rifle. Not enough to matter. So the aliens didn't have to worry about a shot sending them somersaulting backwards.

The lobster man would not have been able to hold them that way, the large pincers were in the way. Instead the alien held the sonic cannon at its hip, with the main body of the gun passing the crook of the armpit, and with the bulbous buttstock—the amplifier—beside its back.

The lobster man's eyes—and nothing else—glowed red.

There was gauss fire. From the left. Laura had appeared from one of the rooms. All the shots struck home, on the creature's enormous torso.

Claude thought they would pierce and tear. Magnetic weapons baby can you say am—

The shots bounced off harmlessly.

[11]

Laura paused, right out in the open. Her eyes wide and mouth clenched in desperation and rage.

_No! _

The sonic cannon swiveled. Fired. It was a thick, throaty sound. Nothing at all like the chirp of the alien pistol.

The sonic bolt seemed to go slowly through the water. Claude could see the water shockwave in its wake. His heart cried out in terror.

The sonic bolt hit Laura center mass. The aqua plastic armor might as well have been a silk dress. Laura Dreyfus, Claude's sister, wasn't just cut in two. She exploded.


	28. First Colony Assault, conclusion

**AN: The rest of part 4 right here and now. Took me about a week to write it all up. Debated between giving you guys the whole thing and splitting it up. I split it. Again, sorry the colony assault it took so long.  
**

[12]

The room was still and silent.

Then Claude cried out in grief and fury. His pistol was raised. He emptied it at the fucker.

Most of the shots went wide. Four of them hit. No damage.

The sonic cannon turned again. Fired. The glass fence in front of him detonated, sending him slightly to the right.

Morgan Liner opened fire. The sonic cannon swiveled yet again. All of Morgan's shots missed. The lobster man fired and did not. It was like Morgan had stepped on a landmine. He didn't even have a chance to scream.

Haru cried out, shooting his own rifle. Every shot missed. The lobster man returned fire at him. Haru could feel the wave of force as the immense sonic bolt missed him by mere inches.

The shot passed him and hit one of the purple structures behind him. It exploded with titanic force, sending him forward, toward the alien.

[13]

The twin sonic cannons each blew up a cryogenic pod, and they looked like crushed watermelons as they exploded.

Dayako retreated for her life, firing off some meager shots. One of the three actually hit the dinosaur right in the face. No effect. She rounded the corner as another blast sailed through the spot where she'd been not even two seconds ago.

The bolt collided with a Gillmen from the opposite room, whom had been trying to sneak up on her. It exploded, and so did the meager sonic pistol it was holding. Only the thing's head was left, and it wore a grotesque parody of a smile.

Dayako screamed, firing a burst at it before she realized that there was literally nothing to be shoot at.

_It doesn't make sense, none of this does! How could a dinosaur be under the fuckin water?_

She quickly glanced at her map, and went down a passageway. She saw a large fence enclosed around a large hole. Just slightly beyond that, another much smaller hole enclosed by a much smaller fence.

She passed it, sparing a glance inside. Inside it, two revolving discs of white light, smothered in darkness.

_Is that the thing? Is that the fucking thing?_

She tried to aim at it, her arm shaking so badly she doubted she would hit even at this range.

Then two things happened. The dinosaur, came into the intersection, and fired more shots. One of them destroyed took out a large portion of the large fence beside her.

Secondly, something came out of the dark hole she was looking in. An aquatic demon, with massive green eyes and large pincers. One of them groped for her.

She backed off, her gun held in front of her like a shield. The pincer caught it and crushed it instantly.

Dayako screamed again, and retreated again.

She went farther north, past another cryogenics room, past a room in which alien things were suspended in clear blue orbs. She could hear something slithering in the unseen room to the right. Something getting closer.

She rounded a corner, knowing she shouldn't, knowing she should go in a straight line.

And bumped into Rachel Henderson

Both of them screamed.

[14]

The lobster man would not die. It took gauss fire from three different sources, but would not die.

_It's not even getting wounded, _Robert Cohn though, with increasing horror.

No it wasn't. The gauss bolt's relationship to the creature was like that of a bullet hitting Superman.

It was easy to aggro—seeming to fire at whomever managed to hit it. Claude had the most success, and so received most of the fire.

Claude had retreated to a room behind him. It was the entrance room, with glowing green-blue tiles that would take them out. It took every bit of willpower not to take it and just leave.

The lobster man stopped to reload. The process was almost hilariously clumsy.

Haru recovered from his spin. Now he was clawing the water trying to get to Claude's position. His gun was floating harmlessly away. He remembered it, debated going back for it, then remembered what was barely ten feet away from him and started moving to Claude like someone lit a fire inside his ass.

_Damn him! _Jahani thought. He paused to reload.

And then Cohn screamed next to him.

[15]

"I found an elevator leading upstairs." Rachel said. She was sweating like a pig. Her voice was breaking even as she tried to sound in control.

The two of them were hugging a wall. The room they were in had the strangely shaped pink pistons. They were humming. The two of them could still hear the dinosaur in a nearby room. Their frantic eyes looked at each exit: two were open, one was a wide door and bronze-colored door.

"Wait..." Dayako said.

"The fuck do you mean _wait?_"

"I think I saw the target! What we came here for in the first place!"

"Back there?"

"Yeah." Dayako said. "But it's too late to do anything about it."

Something strange crossed Rachel's face.

"No." Dayako said. "Don't even think about it."

"We're already here, Chikage."

"We don't even know for sure that it's the target." Dayako protested.

Rachel seemed to think so, too. That awful look of desperation was gone, and seeing it leave Henderson's face relieved Dayako more than anything else.

They moved forward, through the piston room, into a room that had holes on the floor. The holes expanded and contracted. In them were green crystals.

Also in the room, was a single-tile elevator. They both took it.

[16]

Jahani heard the scream. Turned. He could make no sense of what he was seeing.

A gigantic brain with tentacles had latched onto Cohn, binding his arms. His gauss rifle was drifting away.

The brain had a beak on its front and now it stretched wide, yellow slime bridging the gap between top and bottom.

Cohn screamed. Jahani was too stunned to do anything.

It bit Cohn. Not going for the helmet, shattered it and his face at the same time. It bit Cohn in the chest. Cohn stopped screaming almost immediately

_RUN! _

Jahani turned and fled. He gave the lobster man a very wide berth, dreading every second it wasn't in his field of view. It hadn't resumed with the firing and killing. It was probably still loading its weapon with its fucking big, fat, stupid claws.

He made it to the opposite wall, hugged it, went left until he'd reached Claude.

Claude had just emptied his third magazine. Now he was on his final one. He took careful shots between more sporadic ones. Half his clip was depleted within seconds.

The lobster man wasn't fazed.

"Why won't you FUCKING DIE?!" Claude screamed, spittle marking the inside of his helmet. Tears ran down his face in hot trails.

"Claude!" Jahani shouted. "We gotta get out of here!"

Cohn's body drifted through the air, rotating slowly. It turned to the three remaining Divers. Cohn's face had turned green. His limbs were bloating through his aqua plastic armor.

Jahani had heard of this kind of thing before. The melee attack, the grotesque effect on the victim's body. But how could it be happening so fast?

"CHRYSALID!" he screamed.

Tentacles erupted from Cohn's body, covered with red gore. The poor man's body was bisected. The barbed tentacles had actually seemed to be prying it open.

Out popped another big brain. Already fully developed. What the fuck Charles.

Jahani turned to Claude, begging: "Boss! We have to leave. Please."

Claude ignored him, emptying the rest of his clip at the lobster man.

The lobster man responded by finally reloading his weapon properly.

It took fire from the right.

[17]

It was Rachel who had fired, Dayako behind her, from a room to the right of Claude and the others. Rachel's shot glanced off the lobsterman's leg. It might've been their imagination, but every single Diver fancied they saw that left leg recoil a bit, buckle and hyper-extend. The lobster man briefly jerked to one side, losing its balance.

The sonic cannon swiveled again. Rachel and Dayako saw it coming and both swam toward Claude, trying to make a difficult target.

Claude saw with horror that it was leading its target.

The sonic cannon fired, hitting Rachel Henderson's wrists as she was in the middle of a breast-stroke. Everything from the elbows-down was sheared away, as if with a giant's blade.

Rachel's eyes glazed over. She stopped moving.

Dayako shrieked, grabbing her. She peddled one-handed.

Claude felt like throwing up. He released his grip on his useless gun. He sat there, hovering just above the floor, flaccid and impotent.

Haru and Jahani, already on the glowing escape tiles, opened fire on the new big brain. Taking remarkably careful shots. They forced it back. It rolled over, stopped moving.

The previous big brain came into view. Haru fired at it, severing its beak. It's tentacles flew up, seeing to grasp at the new and terrible ruin on its face.

Dayako and Rachel tumbled into the room with the glowing tiles.

Claude still stood in the doorway. He stared dead at the lobster man.

"Let's go Claude!" Jahani shouted. He was crying now.

"I will kill you. I will kill every last one of you fuckers." Claude said quietly.

The lobster man's fangs parted, its tendrils stood slightly erect. It looked like it was smiling. It raised its sonic cannon.

"CLAUDE!" Jahani shouted.

Claude turned and fled into the exit.

[18]

Taxi was waiting for them at the blown out entrance. Alien torpedo launchers be damned.

She had to dodge one just before she landed.

"Hurry up people, not much time before another one gets me."

They came.

[19]

Nobody said anything on the ride back to Sacred Tear. They cried. They moaned. Claude's body was like numb stone. The tears wanted out. He would not let them. Not yet.

They were in the sub pen now. Not yet.

The bridge between sub and the pen was lowered. Claude stumbled his way across, prompting shouts of alarm from Jahani. The warnings went unheeded. Claude's flippers were already discarded on the Triton's cabin. He made it to the main deck, fell to his knees as the paramedics came.

And began to cry.


	29. Morning

**AN: This is an update chapter more than anything else. The previous chapter had taken me about a week of constant writing and had burned me out. This is another update chapter, something to let you guys know I'm still alive  
But holy shit, almost two years, I can't believe it. **

Morning

March 18

[1]

Doctor Petrenko listened to their stories. All their stories, one after the other.

The process took the better part of three hours. Most of the info at the beginning matched. _Most _that is, as opposed to _all._

Of note was the jellyfish-creature, which George Rankin had dubbed a Hallucinoid. Claude, Jahani, Dayako reported a fog had overtaken them, and shadow-phantoms had been within that fog, stalking them.

Haru had seen nothing of the sort, and didn't know what the fuck the others were talking about. There had been no fog at all and no phantoms.

Of course, towards the end, as the elevator in the central tower had scattered them, their stories diverged. The end result was the same: fourteen Divers had raided the base, and five had made it out.

Rachel Henderson was in critical condition, and would need two prosthetic hands. The surgeon who'd done that shit for that Mendoza chick was on his way here.

Tanya Olsen was missing and assumed dead.

Laura Dreyfus, the Diver Commander, had been blown apart by an abomination that she didn't do any visible damage to.

Claude was not in good shape at all. None of them were. One of the orderlies had learned the hard way not to surprise any of them. Right now he was in a separate infirmary with a broken jaw. Dayako had done that, then burst into tears.

But Claude was agitated. He constantly shifted between somber and hyper-aggressive. Drugging him only slightly dampened the extremes. He was nearly impossible to talk to during the interview, with every answer being a snapped out instead of just said.

He blamed the weakness of the aqua plastic armor, the low stopping power of the gauss weapons. He blamed the lack of reconnaissance done prior to the mission. He blamed the elevator scattering the Divers all across the insides of the alien colony.

And the alien that had killed Laura. On that subject he screamed out every obscenity Petrenko knew, and a number that she didn't.

She had to conclude the interview prematurely. The orderlies (and base security) took Claude away.

She sighed. She had nothing else scheduled for the day. She

Natasha Petrenko got up, went to her quarters, locked the door (she encountered Rankin on the way and said hi to him). She rummaged around under the bed, for the tobacco paper and box of pot she had smuggled in. She got a generous portion, put it in the paper, rolled it up, licked it. She got the cheap, see-through lighter from under her pillow.

She smoked for about ten minutes, sprayed around the air freshener, curled up into bed.

Then she began to sob, praying to God for this mad war to be over.

[2]

Captain Joe Vargas did the debrief and got the interview report from Petrenko.

He reviewed it while drinking Racer 5. It was 9 am, probably a little bit early to start drinking, let alone drinking such a strong IPA. But it was one bottle. He should be fine. And he almost never did this kind of thing.

The whole base was quiet. Sacred Tears comms wasn't bothering him about the details of the patrol of New Year in the North Sea, or that of Rainbow in the South Atlantic. Rankin and the rest of Research had nothing to report in. Neither did Yamata and his Tech team.

Rankin was studying the engines found in the USOs, calling them ion-beam accelerators.

Yamata was studying the alien grenades.

Whoopdie-doo.

His mind drifted to Laura, and his eyes stung with tears. He wiped them quickly, nobody must see. It didn't matter that his captain's quarters were locked and he had to buzz people in. There could be no risk of the tears being seen.

Poor Laura, with her short brown hair and her brown eyes, and her lethality. She was like a heroine out of a sci-fi flick. Of the Divers the captain had talked to, he'd had the most conversations with her. About the best Divers to use on missions. About how they were holding up in the Battle Ground area below the barracks.

Two weeks ago, Laura had wanted Rita Mendoza transferred here. Thought she would do more good in the Atlantic as opposed to the Indian Ocean. There were more USO contacts here.

Vargas understood where she was coming from, but ultimately disagreed. Sacred Tear had plenty of veterans (at the time), and Sea Metro did not. And while the Atlantic got more USOs, the aliens had seen fit to send that larger one to the Indian.

Mendoza—as long as she remained alive—would be Metro's ace. They would need at least one.

They'd talked about their dreams too. Vargas was 35, very young for the head of any major organization, let alone a paramilitary group. He hadn't been chosen for the project so much as drafted. His draft was based on his scores in the Gollup Games—an unpleasant four-month-long experience that he would just as soon forget.

Once the Second Alien War was over, he wasn't entirely sure what he'd do. He knew he'd take one hell of a vacation, but not where. Maybe to the Caribbeans, or maybe to China. Maybe he'd go all over the US, and go to famous food trucks and gorge himself on all their shit.

That made Laura laugh until she snorted. She had a nice laugh, a nice snort. Vargas' face had burned in spite of himself.

Laura's dream—other than her brother Claude dropping out of the project, and taking his scrawny ass somewhere safe—was to be a teacher. She actually had a certificate and done a little substitute teaching in Oregon, where she and Claude lived.

"I might be able to teach you how to actually talk to people, captain." She had said once, smiling broadly. She had hard edges, plenty of them, but around Yamata and Joe himself, the edges had been soft. Not really there at all.

"Or...I could just keep on not talking to people, commander." Vargas had answered, and his smile had been even broader.

She was in her base uniform, plain and grey and simple. He had wondered something he didn't wonder often: how she would look with nothing on.

There was nothing left now, not even a body to give back to her family. They might ask for Claude to be removed from the project. Vargas would grant that, if that's what the man wanted. He was drafted but his Divers were not. He was no Joseph Stalin and this was no police state.

He leaned back in his chair, glancing at the computer monitors. Nothing red showing up. Sea Metro and Sweet Lime (the strike base in the South China sea) sent its condolences for the passing of Laura and most of her team.

He finished off the last of his bottle, and it was punctuated by a loud burp. He eyed the rest of the sixpack, sitting in the cooler at his feet. _No, one is enough, it's not even 10 am yet, _he thought. But he had reached for another and popped it open before the thought was even finished.

"I'm so fucking sorry Laura." Captain Vargas said. "I'll see you when I fall asleep."


	30. In-fighting

In-fighting

March 28

[1]

Nothing much happened for the following week.

George Rankin smiled ruefully, wondering if the aliens were giving them a break after that entirely fucked colony assault.

He stared at the broken down pieces of the ion-beam accelerator, watching Donovan go through it because he and Mahmoud were the best in terms of engineering.

"It's fascinating." Mahmoud said. "It's capable of displacing up to—"

"Can we use it?" Rankin heard himself say.

"I think so. It'll take some adjustments of course. But..."

"What about armor?"

"What?" Mahmoud asked.

"Could. It. Be. Used. To. Make. Armor?" Rankin said slowly. He was never in a good mood, even at the best of times.

"Actually, yes." Donovan said. "We wouldn't use the accelerators themselves. But they've given us remarkable insight with regards to powered units that function both on land and in the water."

"Good. I trust you guys have this all under control."

"But, sir, where are you going?" Mahmoud asked.

"To take a fucking nap."

"Right _now?_" Donovan asked.

Rankin snapped. "Yes right _fucking _now! Is that a problem?"

Donovan looked pissed. He was tired of Rankin's shit attitude. "No. Of course not. That would only be a problem with a competent head scientist."

Rankin smiled thinly. "You're fired. Get the fuck out of_ my _lab."

"You can't do that!"

"I just did. Get out of my lab, before I call security."

"It's Captain Vargas' lab you idiot!"

Rankin's eye twitched. "Call me that again, and I promise you won't say it a third time."

Donovan stood up abruptly, almost laughing the words out. "Is...is...is that a challenge? I'm twice your size and half your age, dumbass!"

None of them took a step towards the other, but Mahmoud suddenly stood up and got between them anyway. "Gentlemen! We are all friends here. I know we just suffered a bad loss, but we can't let..."

"Out of my lab, leave your coat on the rack." Rankin said again. "I better not see you in here when I get back."

He left before Donnie the Dipshit could think of a comeback.

It wouldn't be a nap. Not at all. It was one in the morning and he was shagged. The plastic armor he'd designed...it had worked about as well as a spiked dildo did for an eyeball. The sonic cannons had eaten right through it. Of course, that was nothing surprising. The Gillwomen Vera Price had stated that sonic cannons were strong enough to punch holes through the inside walls of their own submarines.

But damn he just wished that it hadn't been Laura. Laura was their best shot. Their Levi Ackerman. Their Luke Skywalker.

He'd gotten the autopsy report on Laura. _Report_ that is, instead of the real thing. No body parts left. Wasn't that grand? Wasn't that something you could roll up tight and shove up your ass?

He was in his living quarters now. He set his alarm clock for nine, thought about it for a moment, then set it for ten.

[2]

The cap smoothed things over with Rankin and Donovan. The wound was stitched but not healed.

[3]

March 30

A small USO appeared in the North Atlantic, zipping around the coast of main, and strafing a handful of fishing boats. Sinking two. Local news estimated at least thirty people dead. There was another sighting in the Mediterranean, but it was just that. A _sighting_.

Rainbow was sent out to the former of the two. Her Angler was still equipped with its gauss cannon on one hardpoint and the DUP heavy torpedoes on the other. She was cool and collected. The USO fired twice, then three times.

When the sub tried to escape, it did so in a straight, heading directly away from Sixx. It was fast but the DUP was faster still. It connected square, and the explosion was like a weak firecracker in the distance.

She looked for a broken hull and found nothing but bits and pieces. She thought she saw an alien head floating through the debris; she wasn't too sure about that, and didn't want to check either way.

New Year didn't find anything in the Mediterranean, reported as such and made it back home.

Sacred Tear's research division put their research on the ion-beam accelerators on hold.

"You sure that's the best course of action?" Captain Vargas asked Rankin. The two were talking to one another on video-phone.

"It's not so much a juncture in the research so just as a series of stairs, one after the other." Rankin said. "It's like teaching algebra 1 and 2 before 3 and 4. We need to understand zrbite at its fundamental level before we even think about its interactions with the rest of the alien technology."

"Yeah, that makes sense." The captain said. "You're the egghead, and I'm Ender Wiggins. Next time, just tell me sooner rather than later, OK?"

"Roger that."

"How are you and Donovan?"

Rankin laughed. It was nervous, angry laughter. The only kind he seemed capable of nowadays. "You say that like we're married or something. We're fine."

"I hope you are. We suffered a big loss, Rankin. You and I both know that. We gotta keep it together. The aliens will wipe us out otherwise. You copy?"

"Yes sir. I do." Rankin was glad when the cap ended the call.

Two days later, March was finally fucking over.

[3]

April 3

A batch of new Divers came in for both Sacred and the Metro. Ten for each. Every single one of them was to attend the Battle Zone drill for the following day.

Five new technicians were hired and added to Carl Yamata's team.

Sacred Tear finished production of three gauss cannons to be transferred over to the Sweet Lime in the South China Sea.

"What's next?" Carrie Ulrich asked. She and Yamata were eating the crap cafeteria pizza and staring lovingly at the blueprints of the cannon.

Yamata didn't answer immediately. When he did speak he wasn't satisfied with his own answer. "Dunno. You heard about the shit with that lobster thing right?"

"Right. I don't get that. We're talking about something that accelerating something else to insane speeds. How can anything...just take that?"

"I don't know. But I know this. Our gauss weapons aren't going to be good enough. The lasers were decent enough weapons against everything in the First War but this is the second. We need to add something to the tip. Something to make it stronger."

He would talk to Rankin about it soon.

[4]

April 5

Claude was in the Battle Zone, racking up kills (not really) and putting awe into the recruits.

Five Divers on each side, uneven cover in the form of hanging blocks. Claude just went way ahead of the rest of his team. He didn't care.

He swam towards the line of trainees. They all opened fire at him. At stuttered intervals instead of all at once. That was the way they were supposed to be firing them, but Claude dodged with a terrific-looking barrel roll.

One of the shots grazed his left flipper. That didn't count as a kill, so the dart didn't light up and neither did his training suit.

Claude responded by turning upright and firing his dart pistol in a wide fan. One of the shots hit a rookie dead center in the helmet. Her scream was equal-parts excitement and terror. "Shit!"

The rest of the shots went wide. Claude spent too much time watching the paths of the darts, and so didn't dodge any of the six darts that came his way. Only two of them hit anyway, and only _one _of those wasn't a glancing blow.

Still that meant Claude was out. Instead of moving towards his side, he swam to the recruits.

"Go to your side." One of them said. A snooty Asian woman whose eyes Claude didn't like at all. This bitch obviously thought this was a game.

"Excuse me?" Claude said. "You're looking at a higher rank greenie. So watch the shit you say."

They gaped at him. He couldn't believe what he was saying. His voice was that of a stranger.

"Firstly, your aim were terrible."

"Great English round-eye." The lady said.

The rest of her team exchanged shocked looks.

Claude smiled a smile that was all teeth. "I meant exactly what I said. "Were," as in plural, past-tense form of "is." Your as in the plural possessive of _you_." He pointed a trembling finger at the woman. "Your aim sucked dick."

"Maybe you know something about sucking dick I don't."

Claude's terrible grin widened. "Oh I really fucking doubt that. Trina was it?"

"Uh...no?"

"You missed me. I was at...what? Fifteen feet. And I wasn't moving. How do you get into XCOM when you aim like you're fucking blind? Not your fault I guess. I can still see some pubes stuck in your eyelashes. Actually, I guess that is your fault. Comb that shit out before you step into this outfit."

"Trina's" arrogant look shattered. She looked livid and hysterical. Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

One of the other recruits spoke up—a black lady with glasses and full-sized lips that made her look like a librarian. "Hey! I don't know what the fuck your problem is but I will be reporting this to Captain Vargas!"

"I'm so afraid." Claude said viciously.

"Man fuck this guy." The fifth one said in a low voice. A man with a black Mohawk.

Two of the recruits stayed where they were. "Trina," Librarian, and Soap from Call of Duty came a bit forward. Claude released his dart gun, his fists like stones at the ends of his arms.

"Sir, we need to talk."

Claude spun around. It was Haru. Haru looked solemn, haggard. His sleek black hair had no luster to it. On both sides of him were SPs with gauss pistols on their belts. One of them had his hand on his.

"Fuck off Ichiro."

Haru's face was stone. He showed not even a trace of fear. He leaned in when he spoke, and his voice was soft and reassuring. "Claude, I'm giving you the choice. Either you talk to me..." he gestured to the SPs. "Or you talk to them."

Claude leaned in himself. His voice was just as soft, but not reassuring at all. Oh no...

"Fuck. Off."

Haru closed his eyes.

[5]

"I should fucking fire you." Captain Vargas said.

Claude said nothing. He stared at the floor.

"I got you down for verbal abuse, sexual harassment, resisting arrest, and assault on two security personnel."'

Claude said nothing.

"You may have gotten some pamphlet in the mail I wasn't aware of Dreyfus. Something that says that you get to take out _your_ problems and _your_ anger on _my_ fucking subordinates! No such luck."

"So this is it then?" Claude said quietly.

Vargas was pacing around the room as he vented. Now he sat back down in his seat. "I knew I was letting you back into the action too soon. That was on me. Your family asked for you."

Claude already knew about that. He already told them he'd stay in the organization. The conversation had not been...pleasant.

"They want you out of the program. I'm granting their request."

"Please don't." Claude's voice was weak, barely above a whisper.

"What?"

"I don't want to leave."

Vargas sighed. ""I'm afraid your opinion is not a factor in this conversation. You'll be picked up tomorrow at 1130."

"I've got nothing to look forward to." Claude said.

"You've got your parents, your oldest brother, your youngest brother."

"I...don't..." Claude struggled to say the next words. "I don't give a shit about any of them. Not really. My parents were asshole conservatives who didn't want me wasting tuition money on a 'liberal arts degree.' But medicine was boring and engineering was just maddening. So I joined the army. Then I joined XCOM because you guys paid a lot better. And I thought, 'there's no way an alien war would ever happen again right?'

"But Laura joined and that should've been my first clue. No way she'd join something that turned out to be a hoax." Claude sighed. "Laura was my favorite, and I was hers."

He guessed that sounded mighty strange. Even inappropriate. But that didn't matter. Vargas knew what Laura was, and also knew what she wasn't. There was _no _Flowers in the Attic shit going on with her and Claude.

"But that's XCOM right? We knew what we signed up for. There are no guarantees in war. Forty years ago, even when our soldiers started strapping on powered armor they took casualties. Especially alien bases. I just...thought I would take it better."

"Claude you don't have to keep on going."

Claude raised a hand. "No let me finish, please...sir."

The "sir" part was entirely unnecessary, and in fact the captain hated it. But whatever.

"I thought she would die blowing up an alien base. I thought she would die killing the leader of a terror mission. I thought she would die with alien guts in her teeth, because that's how strong she was. But that lobster-fucking-thing..."

Claude broke. It lasted for much too long, but it couldn't be helped.

"We didn't do a damn thing _to _it. Our fucking magnetic weapons were like splurts of ejaculate. I don't even know if that thing was even aware that we were trying to _kill _it.

"I want to stay, cap." Claude said. "I want to kill all of them. Every last one. Please. Let me stay. I will apologize for my behavior. But I have to stay."

"Enough." Captain Vargas said, waving a trembling hand that was supposed to be smooth and languid, to show how calm and neutral he was even now. In truth he was nothing of the sort. What to do?

He considered it for a good ten minutes, having Claude leave while he talked it over with some of the senior staff, Rankin and Yamata included. He actually paged Haru Ichiro, had him come in, and get his opinion on it. He wasn't senior of course, but he and Claude knew each other well.

It was the longest ten minutes Claude had ever waited in his life. Somehow, it beat out the return trip from the alien colony in terms of raw agony. The agony of not _knowing._

Eventually, the cap called him back in.

He didn't even have a chance to sit down before the captain said, "You can stay. For now..."


	31. MIA

MIA

April 5

[1]

They never found Tanya Olsen's body and she was never confirmed dead. It was something that bothered Captain Vargas for months after the assault, even though he knew that there was nothing he could do about it. Like Dayako and Rachel, she'd ended up completely alone. Unlike them, she hadn't linked up with anyone later.

Likely she _was _dead. She certainly hadn't returned to the Triton in time for liftoff. The thing had barely even settled on the seabed before the mission was officially aborted. Vargas reported her as MIA, which meant her parents would have received a letter sometime last week, as well as a call from the government. Same went for the other casualties. Except unlike the KIA, there'd be even _less _closure for Tanya's parents. They'd hold out hope that she _was _just missing. Or maybe they wouldn't. They would be resigned to her fate the same as Vargas.

It sucked. Of course Vargas had been fond of Tanya. She was no Laura (who the hell was?) but she was physically very strong. And while she was no Deathstroke, like Rita, Tanya was capable in her marksmen role. Two hardcore pros gone, another one injured. In Sacred Tear, that left them with Claude (who was a hotter mess than Hiroshima after the bomb fell) and Haru, who was a very good medic at this point, but still only a mediocre fighter. At best.

Vargas ran a hand through his hair. _You've got to stop drinking over this shit. _And yet here he was with another six-pack. Racer 5, an India Pale Ale. Hoppy as hell, with a strong blast of different fruits. He'd drink only one tonight. Even if it meant dragging his nails across his bare skin, he'd only drink one. But the damn first bottle was almost fucking empty! Fucking damn!

_Promised, __you promised._

His hands opened and closed helplessly. He wished he had one of those fucking retarded fidget spinners. Maybe one that glowed in the dark. He'd turn off the lights, and just stare into the dots, spinning so fast that they become a glittering arc.

Say, for the sake of argument, Tanya was still alive when the ship blasted off.

That meant Tanya would've been stuck in an alien facility with gauss weapons. And at least one alien completely immune to them, or so close to it that one might as well use the word. And aliens that were like swimming chrysallids. And a dinosaur-thing with mounted sonic guns the seize of a Honda Element. And maybe other aliens that were there but hadn't been seen.

If she made it to the outside, she'd have to fight off any stragglers that the squad had missed on entry. Assuming she managed _that _she'd still be stuck on the coast of the fucking Antarctic.

The insulation of the suits meant that the cold water wouldn't be a problem—obviously since the mission had happened in the first place—but swimming ten miles to the coast would be.

Vargas had little hope that she was alive.

_It'd be really fucking cool if she was though, _he thought, reaching for another beer.

[2]

Tanya was 26 years old. She was white with short black hair and black eyes. People said she had more than a passing resemblance to Tanya from Command and Conquer: Red Alert 1. She could play the piano and graduated from Baker College with a degree in chemistry.

Speaking of Red Alert, she placed the three games in the series, but actually in reverse order. The Allies' commando unit, "Tanya," was Tanya's favorite unit in each game. Because she played them backwards, she got to hear the voice of Tanya grow better with each game instead of worse: from a blonde model with makeup and a perm trying to sound tough (and failing badly), to a feisty anti-hero, to ax-crazy motherfucker who laughs as she guns down the Soviets.

She read Tami Haog and sent short stories to anthologies that never accepted them. She thought about writing for the local paper but never worked up the courage to apply for them. She'd given a total of 50 pints of her O-negative blood to the American Red Cross. She had two sisters, a younger and a twin. The twin was currently working for Lockheed-Martin.

Tanya Olsen was many things.

"Alive" was one of them.

Around the same time, Claude was having his tragic conversation with Captain Vargas, Tanya opened her eyes to look at a tinted blue glass surface. She blinked several times. Her mind was cloudy. Shadowy half-images danced in the back of her head. And not good ones...oh no...

She looked around. The blue screen was part of a large container about the size and shape of a bathtub...assuming the bathtub had an enclosed top. The screen itself was 40 by 70 inches, much taller than it was long. It was a translucent screen, but there was no movement on the other side...that she could see.

The capsule pod itself was of unknown material. Probably aqua-plastics. Perhaps a composite. She didn't want to guess. There was no point in guessing.

Her body was cold...but it was a strangely pleasant cold. She looked down, her body was wrapped in ice. Her arms were folded in a cross.

The screen changed, from translucent blue, to a more solid blue. Letters appeared one by one in the upper-right hand corner.

GREETINGS.

Tanya could not answer. The letters disappeared, and were replaced with new ones.

MY NAME IS PETER GIBBONS. MY FRIENDS CALL ME GIBBS.

Tanya's mouth was frozen shut, but she could still think. _Who are you? What are you? _

She waited, expecting that her thoughts were somehow heard.

DON'T BOTHER TRYING TO SPEAK. YOU ARE PARTIALLY FROZEN. THE TECHNOLOGY OF MY MASTE IS QUITE ADVANCED. IT MAKES OUR COMMUNICATION ONE WAY. I'M SORRY FOR THAT.

So this thing couldn't hear her thoughts after all.

YOU MAY OR MAY NOT REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED PRIOR TO YOUR...CONTAINMENT. LET ME CUT TO THE BONE: I SAVED YOU.

[3]

When the tentacle brain came at her, it came with its mouth open and barbs pointed.

One of them wrapped around her left arm, the barbs going in like fine daggers. The pain was immediate and crippling: every muscle in that arm clenched like garrote wire. Her hand formed a fist so tightly that she thought her fingertips would puncture the palms. She knew immediately that her left arm was no longer under her control.

Her curse was distorted into a simple shriek of pain. A tentacle seized her other arm, paralyzing that one as well. A third tentacle slipped around her waist and it was like she had dove belly-first into a live transformer wire. Her stomach muscles clenched, making her feel like she was going to shit.

Then there was nothing. No feeling at all. One of the barbs penetrated close to her spine.

_That's it, _Tanya thought. Her mind was already slipping, falling down and down into darkness.

The monsters disgusting teeth crept closer. Tanya wanted to close her eyes, but she could not.

Then something strange happened. There was a meaty ripping sound. Tanya thought it was one of the tentacles damaging her body. She couldn't feel it of course, but that didn't mean it didn't happen.

She stared at horrendous sight in front of her: the brain, the beak and its gaping maw. It wasn't getting any closer. In fact, it was drifting back a little bit.

_What? What's going on?_

Her eyes rolled left and right. There was something to the right: an alien. One she'd never seen before. One with a red shell like a lobster. It was tall. She was only looking at its chest, at two different pairs of limbs. Ugh...it might be like a spider. She fucking hated spiders.

She looked up, saw the compound eyes. Ethereal light seemed to ripple across it; she didn't know if it was reflecting the shit from the environment, or if it was something else. Its mouth was a mass of feelers and fangs. It made her think of spiders. Which she fucking hated.

She looked to the left. The brain still wasn't moving. Its mouth with the jagged teeth loomed in front of her. She looked up. The "Mohawk" on the top of the brain was gone. Torn off. It was hovering near the lobster's large right pincer. A series of thick, clear cords hung from the bottom, drifting lazily through the water. Left where the Mohawk had been was a gaping cavern of a wound. The brain matter itself didn't seem damaged. The thing was just...frozen in its attack position, an ugly sight for certain.

_The brain was scalped._

No. Not scalped. Lobotomized.

The lobster-thing stepped forward. It raised its large pincers. _It's going to kill me, _she thought. But that didn't make sense. It could have just left the brain alone if it wanted that.

The lobster alien snipped off the base of the tentacle wrapped around her right arm. Then stepped closer and snipped away the one holding her torso...and then her left arm.

She wanted to immediately move away, but her limbs were numb. Their movement was like a bad parody of movement by someone going through physical therapy.

It didn't matter. The lobster alien grabbed her. She thought its power pincers would rip right through her pathetically human body. But it cradled her, its touch somehow delicate.

Then she blacked out.

[4]

Yes, she was saved. By Peter Gibbons. But was Gibbons the lobster man? Or was it (he) something else?

YOU HAVE NO TRAITS OF TECHNOPATHY. HOW LITTLE? I HAVE NO IDEA. ALL THE SAME, IT MEANS THERE'S NO POINT TO ME PUTTING IMPLANTS IN YOU.

The words were deleted, and new ones added:

PERHAPS IT'S FOR THE BEST. IF I GIVE YOU CYBERNETICS, THE SOLDIERS OF MY MASTER WILL BE ABLE TO SENSE YOU. KIND OF LIKE HOW THE Z FIGHTERS IN DRAGON BALL Z COULD SENSE STRONG ENEMIES FROM A DISTANCE.

Deleted. Replaced:

I WILL NEED YOU TO BE STEALTHY. YOU WILL BE A COMMANDO. JUST LIKE IN COMMAND AND CONQUER.

FOR MY FRIENDS. FOR JACK KELSO. AND RITA MENDOZA.

Tanya's breath caught in her throat. Mendoza? Gibbons couldn't mean the same Rita Mendoza who was stationed in Sea Metro?

A beeping sound. The words disappeared. Suddenly, Tanya wasn't cold. She was burning hot. She was melting. The ice was evaporating very rapidly.

There was a hissing sound, and the door began to open. A final set of words appeared on the blue glass screen.

THERE IS MUCH WORK TO BE DONE.


End file.
